


Not Fit To Live On Land

by SueDeeNimh



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Dubious Consent, Eggpreg, Language Barrier, Merperson Jared Padalecki, Multi, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-Human Genitalia, Other, Oviposition, Worldbuilding, historical accounts of mer-rape, implied potential endgame Jensen/Gen/Jared/Danneel, magical invented biology, plus random latin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-27 21:42:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19798333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SueDeeNimh/pseuds/SueDeeNimh
Summary: Legend says mermaids lure sailors to their doom, but what do they want with them, anyway? Hapless sailor Jensen is about to find out the hard way. Gen and Jared are half cold-blooded fish, and they need a warm-blooded human's help for their offspring to survive, but unless the three of them learn to speak each others' languages, it's going to be a rough ride. Can Jensen bring himself to let love in—literally?





	1. Sea-Life

**Author's Note:**

> This may never have been started without [Dancing_Adrift](https://twitter.com/Dancing_Adrift) telling me to write my mermaid plotbunny nearly three years ago now, and she was kind enough to beta the Spanish language bits just now; thank you, A!
> 
> And _thank you,_ [BeeLikeJ](https://beelikej.dreamwidth.org), who picked this fic out of many others in the [SPN and J2 Big Bang](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com/) (run by the peerless [Wendy](http://wendy.livejournal.com/)) and created wonderful paper art for it! I'm in awe. She's also been a fantastic cheerleader and partner as I worked up to the last minute, so thank you so much! You can see fantastic "the making of" content and bonus paper porn at her artpost: [LJ](https://beelikej.livejournal.com/550111.html) | [DW](https://beelikej.dreamwidth.org/549730.html)
> 
> And thank you [BlindSwandive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlindSwandive) for HEROIC betaing, especially in said last minute, and making the story so much better than it would be without her! All remaining mistakes, including any in Latin, are mine.
> 
> Chapter one is worldbuilding and porn, chapter two is angst about consequences, chapter three is the kinky porn, and chapter four is more worldbuilding and consequences. Full title quote, which I shamelessly diced up for chapter names: "When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land." —Samuel Johnson
> 
> Heed the tags on this one, gentle readers!

* * *

  
Jensen hit the water hard—the ship was a big modern cargo hauler, and the deck he’d been thrown from was high enough the water stunned him on impact. He stared up at the outline of the ship above him, propelling through the water at twenty knots, at least. There went his last chance to make something of his life. His last chance at life, too, really. His hands and feet were bound, and he wouldn’t even be able to keep his head above water with all his clothes and boots weighing him down—either the propellers would shred him in the next thirty seconds, or he’d run out of air shortly after that and drown. 

He tried anyway, thrashing his whole body—hey, it worked for dolphins—but the surface looked far above him and kept getting farther. Ordinarily he was a good swimmer. But this was how he was going to die. His lungs were already burning by the time the ship's shadow passed and the turbulence in the water got less wild. But he wasn’t any closer to the surface, and his thrashing would attract sharks.

When he first saw the dark-and-pale blur from the side, he thought _shark_. As it got close, he could see that was wrong—it looked human, or at least had a human face and arms, but it sliced through the water too fast and clean. No Olympian with rubber swimfins could pull that speed off. Finally it—she—pulled up right in front of him, and he saw the enormous orange fishtail shimmering from her waist down. Her skin above the waist was pale and a cloud of long dark hair floated around her; she wore a few bracelets and a shoulder-pouch, disconcertingly like any woman wore a purse, and nothing else.

As soon as he got a good look at her, she darted in and pressed her lips to his.

She was trying to suck out his breath. His last lungful of air that was all that measured the remaining seconds of his life, ticking away with every beat of his heart demanding oxygen: already his body screamed for him to let the old air out, too dumb to know there was no fresh air to replace it. He wrenched his mouth away—he’d fight for every last second of life.

Frustrated, she pulled back. She pointed to the sides of her neck and down her ribs, and he saw gill slits in neat rows, fanning through the water. Then she opened her mouth and expanded her chest up and down in quick succession a few times. Her boobs bounced in a way that any other time, Jensen would have been very interested in; now, he just tried to figure out what she wanted. 

She reached out to caress his face, a gentle, caring touch. And came back in to press her lips against his again, waiting.

So she could breathe underwater. Bully for her. What did she want his air for, then? He’d think just to torment his last moments—in legends, mermaids always lured sailors to their deaths—but her touch was so gentle, he couldn’t quite believe it of her. All right. She wanted him to trust her. Legend said not to trust mermaids, but what did he have to lose? He opened his mouth and carefully let his air escape into her mouth. 

No sooner did the flow of air pause than suddenly she was pushing it back into him, one precious bubble escaping in his surprise before he gratefully sucked the rest back in. It was fresh. Not that it tasted great, but his body had oxygen again, and his vision stopped going dark around the edges.

Now that he had the idea, he eagerly let her take and return his breath again. It tasted sweet when he knew it was life she was giving him, quick shallow breaths until he felt he wasn’t starving for air anymore.

They were moving, he realized. They’d been moving the whole time, of course, her tail beating lazily against his bound legs as she embraced him, but now that his immediate anoxia was relieved, she kicked the pace up. He saw that they were heading towards an underwater reef.

The ship had been nowhere near shore, or even any islands. Out where the ocean went down a long, dark way—Jensen had heard the assholes who threw him over speculating on whether the pressure would crush him before he ran out of air, if he just kept sinking. In the end they’d decided against tying weights to his feet. But mostly because the weights might be missed, not because they cared how quickly Jensen drowned. Who knew guys would take a good-looking man’s refusal to be their fucktoy so personally?

They were moving fast now and Jensen could see sunlight falling on the seafloor, which rose out of the depths before them. Corals ran rampant, but it levelled off rather than rising to the surface; although this might have been an island a million years ago, now it was only an underwater mountain.

As they swam over the seabed, he started to see odd structures. The coral around the edges looked like any pictures of wild coral he’d ever seen, but he started to see places where it looked like it had been cultivated to grow into hillocks, gardens and caves. He caught glimpses of other merpeople in the distance, but it was hard to be sure, since his vision wavered with the water, and they moved as quick as fish. Before he could get a good look at any of them, his mermaid darted down with him to a cave opening in the coral and they entered a tunnel.

She pulled her mouth away from his to maneuver through the small space. A couple powerful strokes of her tail—he could probably have made it through the tunnel on his own just by holding his breath—and they were popping up into a large bubble. He gasped in surprise: air! They were still far below the surface, so how—?

Veiny branches of coral arched overhead, but the bubble itself was clear, and the sun filtered down into it, dimmed by water. There were land plants in garden beds covering more than half the floor, and hanging in pots from scaffolding going higher than his head up the walls. The tunnel they’d popped out of made a little pool with a gently sloping shallow edge on one side. The floor was smooth-polished stone instead of the sandpapery coral that had lined the tunnel, and there was a single hammock strung up in front of them.

The room was bigger than a ship’s cabin, but not by much.

Jensen was too distracted to absorb much more detail at the moment. The rope on his wrists had swelled with seawater, and it had been tight to start with. As soon as he was sitting in the shallow water instead of the mermaid supporting all his weight, he held his hands out to her in appeal.

“Can you help me get these off? I mean, thank you for saving me, of course. Crap, do you understand me at all?”

She looked quizzical at his words, but the gesture of holding his bound wrists out seemed to make sense to her, because she fished in her purse for a little sharp knife and set right to work cutting away the rope. Her hands were tiny—she would have been much shorter than him if she’d had legs—but she seemed to know what she was doing.

It probably wasn’t the first time she’d seen ropes or nets tangling up living creatures. He wondered if merpeople ever got caught in fishing nets. Human trash was probably hard to avoid these days.

She finished sawing through his wrist ropes and started on his ankles. He stretched his arms out and over his head, luxuriating in the movement. 

“Salve, mi nomen Genovefa est,” she said, slowly, enunciating each word.

“Latin?” he said, surprised. He’d had some high school Spanish, but he wasn’t what anybody would call fluent. “Jensen. Mi nombre es Jensen. Jensen,” he repeated, touching his chest, and reaching out to tap her shoulder. Even though her breasts had been pressed against him...no, he could still be polite. “Genovefa. Like Genevieve.”

She nodded cheerfully. The last of his ropes parted and fell into the pool. “Jensen,” she repeated.

“Thank you,” he said. “Gracias.”

She smiled and ducked down into the water, then lunged out with a flip of that powerful tail to get up into the shallow water next to him. She supported herself with slender, human arms until she could flip herself over to sit beside him.

“Are you going to keep me here?” Jensen wondered out loud. He thought about trying to say it in Spanish, but the words didn’t come. His former shipmates had made the termination of their working relationship extremely clear. All because Jensen hadn’t wanted to roll over and spread his ass for any of those idiot chuckleheads. He’d made that clear and then he’d made it even clearer that he’d report them if they didn’t back off, and prosecute to the full extent of the law. Somewhere between getting wrestled to the deck by four guys and hitting the water without their having even bothered to take his pants off, he figured out that they probably had other reasons not to want legal attention brought to their ship, but by then it was too late for argument. Too late for anything but trying to make his last lungful of air count as the water closed over his head.

If Genovefa hadn’t saved him, he’d be dead. He had no job to get back to, since he clearly wasn’t going back aboard that ship. He had a fiancé waiting for him back in Louisiana, but...he’d left because he wanted to make something of his life, so he had something to offer her. He had less now than when he’d set out, unless he wanted to try to sell “I Was Rescued From Attempted Murder by a Mermaid,” to a tabloid, which he didn’t, really. She wouldn’t hate him if he turned up on her doorstep with nothing but the clothes on his back, but he couldn’t bear to be a disappointment.

Why hadn’t Genovefa brought him to the nearest land, or found a passing ship? This reef-town had to be secret they didn’t want the human world to find out about. Nobody even saw mermaids anymore, they were just legends passed down from ancient Greeks and Romans and anybody else who spent a lot of time in boats.

Genovefa interrupted his confused thoughts by putting her hands on his shoulders, that same gentle touch that had convinced him to trust her in the first place. She leaned up and kissed him, a real kiss this time, not underwater CPR. One hand trailed down his chest and stomach, past his waistband, and rested lightly on the lump in his pants. He didn’t know how much of it was sheer relief to be alive and how much was the way her naked body had swayed against his all the way here, but when she drew back to look a question at him, clear as day, his body was clearly answering _yesss._

There were some things you didn’t need language for. “Yeah,” he said, anyway. Danneel hadn’t let him promise to stay true to her; she’d laughed when he tried. _“Get out there and live, cowboy, you never know what’ll happen.”_ He still felt like a heel kissing another woman, but...if Danneel ever found out he’d passed on sex with a mermaid, she’d smack him.

He helped the mermaid pull his shirt off, stood up to shuck his pants, floundered trying to get them over his boots—finally he managed to get everything off.

Gen was laughing at him, plainly wondering why humans put themselves through so much trouble. There was no way he could answer that, so he splashed down in the shallows next to her and drew her in for more kisses, keeping her busy enough to interrupt the laughter.

She had really lovely breasts, which he had appreciated before but now could devote his full attention to. She was soft in his arms, and it felt delightful to kiss her without his next breath depending on it. 

She guided his hand to a slit where her tail would have divided into legs if she’d been human. The edges were hard and rigid at first, but as he stroked they softened and relaxed, and a little slippery ooze started to come out. He grinned. Some things weren’t so different. He rolled over onto her and put a couple fingers in, checking to see how much room there’d be. She arched and groaned prettily, grabbing at his shoulders and kissing him again passionately.

His cock was already hard and didn’t need any encouragement. He lined up with her slit and went in, not slamming home like he wanted to but going careful and steady. It was unfamiliar territory, after all: despite legends of mermaids having their way with men, details were sparse.

She obviously couldn’t wrap legs around him, so instead he straddled her tail, kneeling. It was a little awkward but not too bad. She felt amazing once he was in her, cooler than human body temperature, but she was tight around him and with a thick, slippery wetness. He could feel her muscles tremble around his cock. He thrust, and flung his head back because it felt so good. 

He opened his eyes and nearly shouted. There, right outside the bubble-room, a full-sized merman was looking in at him. When their eyes met, the merman grinned, friendly and full, and his hips rocked suggestively a couple times before he twisted and swam off, his tail a dark ocean gray.

Jensen’s heart was pounding a mile a minute and he wasn’t sure what to think. Normally he’d expect aggression, coming into a strange culture and getting caught boning a pretty woman by one of the men. His energy flagged as he wondered if the merman was swimming away to get eight buddies with tridents and jab at the bubble until it let all the air out.

But Genovefa was still smiling, not at all worried. She’d noticed their observer, but she was still encouraging Jensen to keep fucking her. And the merman hadn’t _seemed_ angry. 

He couldn’t figure it out, so he put it aside and let Genovefa's hand in his hair pull his attention back to her, back to his easy thrusting into her body. In and out; Gen was meeting him with little hip rolls of her own, and they quickly built in speed and intensity. Soon he cried out: he couldn’t hold it anymore, and she was crying out too, high-pitched little whimpers, and finally they shuddered and lay together, exhausted. 

After a while the stone wasn’t very comfortable to lay on, though, and she chivvied him up and pointed firmly at the hammock. He grinned tiredly at her, dropped one more kiss on her smile, and went. He looked back when he got there: she was sitting deeper in the water, right on the lip of the tunnel back into the ocean, and she put a hand on her lower belly, very deliberately, and smiled at him. Then she slipped into the water and was gone.

He suddenly wasn’t at all sleepy anymore. Was it even possible for a human to get a mermaid pregnant? It _couldn't_ be, could it?

He sat awake in the hammock a long time, wondering what he’d gotten himself into here.

The merman he’d seen yesterday was back when morning light filtered dimly through the seawater above the dome, popping up in the little pool with Gen. He was even bigger than Jensen had thought when he was outside, looking enormous next to Gen, twice her weight at least, probably. A little bigger than Jensen, and Jensen was taller than most people. 

The merman was also startlingly attractive. Everyone expected mermaids to be beautiful, because that was in all the legends, but mermen were barely mentioned in any of them, so he didn’t know what to expect. Genovefa was gorgeous, of course, but it would have been somehow more shocking if she hadn’t been, so he almost took it for granted. Much more immediate when he thought of her was the way she’d saved him, and the unexpected tenderness when she touched him.

But the merman was handsome, skin a shade more tan than his own or Gen’s, hair brown and shoulder-length. It was dark and dripping around his face at the moment, because he’d just come out of the water, but Jensen still couldn’t help staring almost rudely. The merman was doing his own share of staring, too, though.

Jensen knew people thought he was attractive, and he’d been called pretty more times than he liked, culminating with those assholes who’d thrown him off the ship when tried to make the case that if he’d wanted to live as a two-bit whore, he’d have stayed on land to do it.

But the merman wasn’t setting off his hackles, even though he still stared at Jensen with that friendly, approving grin from yesterday. If the men who had come on to Jensen before had looked this good...but no, that wasn’t all of it. It was that there was nothing furtive or shameful in the merman’s expression. It was attraction, simple and open.

Jensen rolled himself out of the hammock as gracefully as he figured anybody ever did when hammocks were involved, and crossed the smooth stone floor to them. The floor wasn’t as cold as he thought it should be, with the sunlight filtering only weakly through the water, not enough for warmth. Next to the tunnel pool, he noticed for the first time, there was another, smaller pool. Water bubbled up from the middle and trickled in a rivulet from it to the larger tunnel pool. Curious, he went over and dipped his bare toes in: it was warm, and it smelled very faintly of minerals. He tasted a drop; it wasn’t salty. A hot spring, then. He wondered if they’d built the bubble here to take advantage of it, or maybe rerouted the spring from somewhere nearby.

Gen and her friend stared with fascination at his legs and feet: he guessed they might not have ever seen a human this close before. But they seemed happy to let him wander around, exploring. _Like a new puppy they’d brought home to the house…_ Jensen shook the thought out of his head, looking over at them. The merman had his arm around Gen as they perched together on the rim of the tunnel, a familiar, intimate posture. Jensen wondered if he’d misjudged after all, if they were lovers and the stranger was only smiling so that Jensen wouldn’t expect it when he started bashing his head against rocks and dragging him out to drown.

“Hi,” he said cautiously.

“Hi,” the merman said back.

“”Jensen,” the new guy repeated obediently, looking at him. “Jared.” He tapped his own chest.

“Jared,” Gen agreed, repeating it and looking at Jensen to be sure he got it. 

“Jared,” Jensen said, smiling. Introductions made them seem friendlier. He decided to try a little Spanish. "¿Por qué estoy aquí?" _Why am I here?_

Jared furrowed his brow and launched into a long string of probably-Latin. 

“Whoa, whoa, too fast, you gotta slow down,” he said. “Lento, slow.” He racked his brain for more Spanish. He hadn’t had to use it in a while. “Por favor, más lento.”

He couldn’t tell if Jared was processing his words, or just realized that they weren’t making sense to each other. “Nos volo ad tuum corpus,” he said, emphasizing each word so Jensen could catch them. 

_Tuum corpus,_ okay, that was probably ‘your body,’ and hopefully not in the sense of ‘corpse.’ “Va a dolerme?” _Are you going to hurt me?_

Jared shook his head, but not like he was saying no to a question he’d understood. More like he was frustrated that less than half of what they were saying seemed to be getting through. He reached into the water and pulled up a woven bag, offering it to Jensen rather than trying any more words for the moment.

Cautiously, Jensen came forward to take it from him. It contained a dead eel the length of his forearm and some seaweed. The fish, on further examination, had been filleted and cleaned.

It had not been cooked. Jensen wrinkled his nose. He certainly couldn’t build a fire in here; even if he could find things to burn and something to start it with, it would use up all the oxygen in about five minutes and he’d suffocate before getting to eat anything. But he wasn’t eager to try eating it raw, either. Dammit. Was the seaweed supposed to be edible, too? He wasn’t really a sushi fan.

But now that he was thinking about food, his stomach growled to life and demanded he eat _something._ He glanced up at his hosts. Captors? They were picking up on his distress, at least. Gen made a calming gesture and pointed him to a crate, set between the wall and the pool they were in.

Jensen had seen it yesterday, but he’d been fully occupied with Gen until after dark, when he hadn’t wanted to go stumbling around his enclosure tripping on things. But Gen was waiting for him to investigate now. The crate had been shoved only a few inches past the waterline; it occurred to him it probably wouldn’t be easy for people with tails instead of legs to maneuver anything heavy when they weren’t in the water. Now that he was thinking about it, he noticed that the scaffolding for the plants that encircled the room had each plant-pot hanging from a pulley on the scaffold, rather than set on shelves as a human greenhouse would do it—humans who could easily stand, and reach above their heads.

The crate, when he reached it, was full of canned chili. His heart leapt and sank at the same time. It was food; but without a can opener, it might as well be on the moon. He started looking around the edges of the crate and digging through the cans.

A delicate cough interrupted him. Gen was grinning at him from the water and held out to him, with an air of great ceremony, a little stainless steel tool. Nothing so fancy as a crank, no, just a triangular claw like a beer opener, but it would open a can, and that was what mattered. He grinned back at her and forgot to be cautious as he splashed into the shallows to take it from her.

She lifted herself a few extra inches out of the water as he got close, and he kissed her without thinking about it, or about the very large merman just over her shoulder. He wasn’t even wearing anything other than boxers. His eyes jerked up to meet Jared’s, but Jared was still smiling, and Jensen was sure that this time he wasn’t imagining the hungry look in his eyes.

Jared wanted him.

He’d never slept with men. He didn’t want that kind of rep. He’d had plenty of offers, damn his good looks anyway, and it wasn’t that he was totally opposed in principle, but he didn’t like feeling like he’d be a notch in somebody’s bedpost.

On the other hand, he’d never had someone as gorgeous as Jared offer, or he might have reconsidered.

Too quickly, Gen was sinking back down into the water. When her head went under, Jensen was surprised to hear a strange quavery burbling noise from her. Jared ducked his head down too, and said something back, and Jensen realized that of course Latin wasn’t their natural tongue: they must have learned it to speak to humans, or in the air, but what he was hearing must be what they normally spoke, underwater. It was a little reminiscent of whale song, but not as deep or slow; it went up and down in pitch, and even though he could not have picked out any one word, it was obviously speech.

They popped back up, water splashing him where he stood thigh-deep. Gen kissed Jared just as quickly and cheerfully as she’d kissed him, and yanked on a thin line that lay across the floor. The chamberpot he’d found and used underneath the hammock the night before came flying towards them; he ducked instinctively, but it was well sealed, and she caught it neatly and slung the rope over her shoulder. She brought up another rope and a new chamberpot appeared out of the water. This she threw across the room, and it rolled to a stop almost where the old one had been, the rope still trailing across the floor into the pool so it could be easily retrieved in turn.

Jensen was impressed, but also...he couldn’t help wondering how many ‘guests’ had inhabited this room before him.

She waved, grinned, and dove, orange tail flipping through the water with enough power this time that she was clearly leaving through the tunnel.

Which left him and Jared staring at each other. The merman scooted closer to him, lifting his torso out of the water in what Jensen thought was a hopeful manner. 

“Yeah, um, sorry,” Jensen said. “Lo siento.” Jared gave him a blank look; that hadn’t translated to Latin. He waved the can of food he was clutching as his stomach growled helpfully. “Food first, right now.”

“Right now,” Jared repeated. He pointed to the can. “Right now?”

Jensen laughed. “Food,” he said. He moved over to the abandoned fish and seaweed and repeated, “Food,” with a little less certainty. But being near the hot spring fountain gave him an idea, and he set the can in the hot water to warm it. “Chili,” he continued the language lesson, pointing. “Fish. Um, seaweed. Bag.”

Jared repeated each word back at him, and then started over from the top and said them all again. Jensen was glad he didn’t offer to teach him the underwater burbling language, since he didn’t fancy holding his breath the whole time it would take him to learn. He could, he supposed, learn Latin, but the sea people might be the only ones in the world who spoke it anymore, other than the Pope. It was hard to picture needing it.

Unless there was going to be a new merperson waiting to have sex with him every morning. He wondered if that was what he’d been brought here for, and repressed a shudder. He didn’t think he’d be able to roll with that. He could handle getting to know Jared and Gen; they were instantly friendly and he wanted to spend more time with them. But—he looked up at the clear dome, searching the waters for more merpeople peering in at them.

There was no one as far as he could see. A few fish swam around amongst the coral, but that was it. If there were more merfolk out there, they were keeping their distance.

“Food?” Jared asked, bringing his attention back. His chili was probably warm by now. It was a pity he couldn’t cook the fish like this.

He thought about it as he cracked open his chili with the can opener. The water was hot to the touch, but not boiling. He stuck his hand down farther in to check.

Ow. Yeah. The little pipe at the bottom was hotter, hot enough to burn him. He grabbed the fish and threw it in, arranging it at the bottom, right in the middle of the hot stream. If he left it there an hour or so, like a crockpot, Jensen was pretty sure it would be more or less cooked.

Jensen made a horrified noise and started protesting in Latin, reaching out like he might grab it out of the hot water.

“I’m not ruining it,” Jensen said firmly, swatting his hand away. “Food. Cooked food. Mmm.” He rubbed his belly.

Jared gave up and dramatically flung himself back into the shallows, rolling over on his back and covering his face with his whole arm. _I can’t even look at you._

Jensen laughed. He couldn’t help liking Jared; he was so full of life. If this had been a normal, human interaction, he’d already consider them fast friends. 

He wanted to spend more time with the merman, despite being sort of held captive. 

Jared was peeking over at him to see what effect his theatrics were having. Jensen laughed and went over to sit by him as he ate.

Since he didn’t have a spoon, it was more like tossing it straight back from the can. But he was hungry enough not to care. It tasted delicious. He swiped up some juice that dribbled down his chin.

Jared grabbed a bit of seaweed and ate it, demonstrating, like he thought Jensen might need to be shown that it was edible. 

Jensen sighed and took a little bit. Everybody had to try new things, right?

It didn’t really taste good, but it didn’t taste bad, either. He figured it might grow on him if he was stuck here long enough to get sick of chili. But mostly, he did it because of how Jared smiled at him when he did. The amount of time they were spending just smiling at each other...Jensen didn’t know what was up with him. Maybe it was the near-death experience.

Whatever. He swiped up the last of the chili on his finger and held it out to Jared with a teasing grin.

Jared’s eyes went wide: clearly, he hadn’t expected being offered “people food” in return. But then his eyes narrowed. Just as clearly, he wasn’t willing to pass up the opening. His tongue came out and caught a drop as it was about to fall. He absorbed the taste for a second, then his lips closed over the tip of Jensen’s finger. 

Jensen held his breath, scarcely moving.

With a sensual relish that would have made him rich if he’d ever gotten into porn, Jared cleaned his outstretched finger thoroughly before he leaned back and smirked.

Jensen couldn’t be blamed, after that: he had to kiss that smirk off the merman’s face, didn’t he?

Jared kissed back eagerly, one arm coming up to slide up and down his side. There was a lot of bare skin between them; Jared wore nothing but a bracer on his upper arm, and Jensen had never gotten around to putting his still-wet clothes on after waking up. They’d undoubtedly be crusted with salt when they did dry out, and it seemed odd to make something of it when his hosts clearly didn’t care how naked he was.

Thinking about the novelty of so much skin so early in the encounter, Jensen was caught off-guard when Jared bowled him over and landed on top. Gen hadn’t done any such thing. He’d been with women who wanted to be on top of him before—mainly Danneel—but Jared was a lot bigger, and there was no place for his tail to go other than between Jensen’s legs. Or anyway, that’s what he told himself as he spread them to settle Jared comfortably between them.

It was only that there was no escaping that Jared was very, very _male._ Jensen felt a shiver go through him at the position they were in now. It wasn’t anything he was used to, but it was hot; he liked it more than he’d thought he would. There was only one very male thing that wasn’t there, come to think of it. His own dick was pressing enthusiastically into the odd change at Jared’s waist where human skin grew scales and became fish-flesh, but Jared didn’t seem to have the same thing. 

Jensen hadn’t thought much about it before, somehow, but of course it would be ridiculous for mermen to swim around with their junk dangling out. Did that mean they didn’t have any, though? If they did and it was going to come out to play, shouldn’t it be happening by now?

Jared saw him looking down their bodies and laughed. He rolled off of Jensen, who was part relieved and part sorry, and took his hand, guiding it down the gray scales of his tail to a slit in the same place Gen’s had been. Except now that Jensen felt it, there did seem to be a bulge that hadn’t been there on Gen. He stroked it, remembering, and sure enough the edges softened up and relaxed.

In for a penny, in for whatever. Did merfolk use currency? Jensen, feeling reckless, brought his head down and licked. Jared groaned with enthusiasm, and the slit opened for a knob of flesh to peek out.

So they did have something, Jensen thought, absurdly pleased at his discovery. Retractable cocks. Retractable cocks weren’t in any of the mermaid tales he’d ever heard. Obviously those tales didn't know half of it about tails, hah. Jensen could go back home and write a book.

He licked the knobby cockhead a few times, because it was there and why not, and it extruded some more until it was roughly the size of a human penis. Thinner, especially at the tip, definitely more tapered. A bit longer. It was also self-lubricating: a clear, slippery fluid coated it and oozed out around the thick base. It didn’t really taste like semen; it was vaguely fishy, but not very. It didn’t taste like anything he’d encountered before, but it was male and somehow suited Jared perfectly. He decided he didn’t mind it in the least and got more into the blowjob, bobbing his head to take more of it in. 

Jared groaned even more enthusiastically, and ran his fingers gently through Jensen’s hair. Sure, Jensen was nervous about rushing into sex here, too, with an entirely different species, no less. He had no idea what they were planning for him, except that obviously sex was on the table. He wished he could have a real conversation with Jared or Gen, ask what their plans were and how long he was going to stay here and if there were going to be new merfolk every day, all wanting their turn with him. And what would happen if he said no, or asked to leave. Jared and Gen had been nice so far, bent over backwards to make him feel comfortable, and he was enjoying the sex, sure—especially after a long dry spell aboard ship—but he’d enjoy it more if he weren’t worrying about tomorrow.

How _not_ to have sex, Ackles, he told himself. Right now, all he had to worry about was giving a blowjob, and making it awesome. He didn’t have to worry about not having money or knowing where he was going to sleep, at least. He could just focus on making Jared feel good. Plus, the taste was growing on him, the longer he kept at it.

Jared didn’t warn him when he came, just shuddered all over a couple times and flooded his mouth with salty, bitter fluid. Jensen swallowed some of it, but a lot ran out of his mouth. Jared used his fingers to swipe some of it off his chin. He dragged Jensen up into kissing range and arched up to lick into his mouth, kissing wet and deep and dirty.

And Jensen felt his hand reaching around and down his back, skating over the muscle of his ass and into his crack. His fingers were cool and slippery, still, with merman come and Jared rubbed it into his skin, around his asshole and then slipped the tip of a finger into it.

Jensen broke off the kiss. “Look, maybe that’s enough for right now,” he muttered, not expecting Jared to understand the words, but having to say them anyway.

Jared seemed to get the idea, anyway, and his hand backed off good-naturedly to Jensen’s waist. Jensen smiled and rewarded him with a kiss. They made out for a while, comfortably, and then Jared’s hand started moving again, but this time to the front.

Yes, of course Jensen was hard. He’d been hard for ages. Jared was arching a brow in clear question, and Jensen groaned and nodded. “Yes, God yes.”


	2. Come To Like It

The days fell into a pattern. Gen and Jared both came to visit every day. He saw other merfolk at a distance occasionally, outside his little bubble, but they never came near or slowed down to look at him. He got used to it being just the three of them. Most days he wound up having sex with Gen or Jared, or both of them. Gen was delightful and as up for anything as she’d been the first day; he could pick her up and lay her in his hammock, and she’d laugh and cling to him as it rocked precariously. Jared particularly liked to smear his come on Jensen, especially behind his balls; it was a little weird, but—whatever, after a while it would start to tingle and then it felt pretty good. Jared was never demanding, either: if Jensen looked uneasy or hesitant about something, he’d back off and they’d do something else.

They spent a lot of time on language lessons, and slowly Jensen started learning Latin, while Gen and Jared seemed equally determined to learn English. They could only exchange a few words at a time, but still, it was progress.

And they kept bringing him more different kinds of seafood than he’d known existed. Slowly he realized that if he didn’t see one of them for a day, he could expect some increasingly exotic fish or underwater delicacy the next morning: giant crabs with succulent, spindly legs, or a tuna almost as big as Gen. He’d never considered himself a picky eater but this brought adventurous to whole new levels: snails, jellyfish, blobby things he couldn’t identify, and once a drowned seagull. He seized on the seagull with relief.

“Tastes like chicken,” he told Jared, who for once was eyeing his meal dubiously. Usually he was more than happy to sample whatever was on the menu, to “prove” it was edible. Jared boiled everything in the hot spring pool “cook pot” despite Jared telling him how much better some of them were eaten raw, though Gen had become a fan of boiled fish since Jensen fed it to her.

All told, they were buttering him up so thoroughly that he really shouldn’t have been surprised when the other shoe dropped.

Shouldn’t have been. Well, tough shit. He was.

Jared was on top of him, which they both enjoyed. And he was rubbing, again, at Jensen’s perineum, and Jensen was just thinking that something was beginning to feel really weird down there when suddenly he felt his flesh part and Jared's fingertips were suddenly sliding _inside him._

Not in his asshole. He’d gotten used to that over the past few weeks. No, this was something brand new and strange, and Jensen started to freak out.

“Oh my God, what the fuck was that?” he asked. But Jared would be lucky to catch half his words. He grabbed Jared’s forearm and held it as far away from his body as he could. He wanted to back up, but he couldn’t with Jared’s weight on him.

Jared didn’t look shocked or upset. He let Jensen shove him over and scramble out from under him. “No worries,” he said, studying Jensen’s face and looking worried.

“Oh, I’m worried,” Jensen said grimly. Things he had been wondering about were clicking together, fitting in with things he hadn’t thought enough about. This whole setup, the underwater haven for a human, it was way too much trouble to go to for an abandoned sailor. They could have easily dropped him off on an island, or put him on some driftwood and sent him off toward some human-populated shore.

Why keep him around? Just for sex? Because they were amused by him, like the pet goldfish swimming in a tiny waterbowl his mother had kept for a few years? No; he might have thought that for the first day or two he was here, but Jared and Gen...they were _invested_ in him in a way that was hard to define. No sex was that good. He hadn’t fought it, hadn’t minded, really, but that was before…this.

Whatever _this_ was. “What the fuck is going on?” he asked again, this time wanting an answer.

“Ok,” Jared said, trying to sound soothing. He was half in the water, half propped on his elbows, looking at Jensen seriously. “Jensen. Genovefa have eggs. Soon. Need you help. Eggs need warm. We cold. Need you. Why you here.”

He sounded like he’d been rehearsing it in his head, making sure the words were right: dimly, Jensen remembered teaching Jared the word ‘eggs’ as they cleaned out a fish three days ago. Jensen had not had a clue it was going to be so immediately relevant to him.

His mind was flinching away from thinking about it. Jared was still looking at him steadily, and between his legs...Jensen slowly reached a hand down, dreading what he would find. His cock and balls were perfectly normal, although no longer interested in jack shit. But behind them...he had a slit, like the slits in their tails, only smaller, barely big enough for a fingertip. His fingers hovered over it, feeling the edges, not scaly but smooth, unable to explore further. His mind was humming, high and blank. Not far away was a sea-wave of panic, threatening to bury him if he let it. Past the slit, his asshole was comfortingly normal again. Nothing else had changed, he thought. Suddenly he wanted a mirror desperately.

He looked at Jared. Jared was trying really hard to look relaxed and non-threatening, but he kept tensing and tapping and jiggling and then making himself stop, so that the effect was like a teenager waiting to see if the most popular girl at school would go to the prom with him.

Jensen couldn’t hate him, or even fear him. He wasn’t human, he was alien to everything Jensen had known before he came here, but he wore his heart on his sleeve, and Jensen knew that he cared—not just that Jensen had air and food, but that he was _happy_. 

But he didn’t think he could do what they wanted. The idea made him shudder: they wanted to put their _eggs_ in him? Make him a human incubator for little merbabies? No. _No._ He was a man, he was human, he wasn’t even gay, even if he’d liked it when Jensen fucked him, that had nothing to do with anything, ok—he wasn’t—he couldn’t—

“No,” he said out loud. “I can’t…”

Jared’s face fell. He looked heartbroken, and Jensen fought the feeling that he’d just kicked a puppy. How could he be feeling guilty already?

“Okay.” Jared took a deep breath and said carefully, “Come. I swim you to shallows. Humans.”

“Wait,” Jensen said. “Just like that? That’s it?” He felt a new fear, one he hadn’t even thought about before, at the thought of never seeing Jared or Gen again. Dropped off at the nearest town or city, wondering for the rest of his life how they were, if they still loved each other. If they missed him; if they’d found someone new. Somebody who might be willing to let them do this thing they wanted from him. 

It wasn’t a crime to want kids. He could tell they’d be great parents. They might never find someone else if he left, and the thought that they might never have kids made him sorry, but...for them to use his body the way they wanted…he didn’t know if he could say yes to that.

“Wait,” he repeated. “Give me time. I need time to think. Please.”

Jared nodded slowly. “Okay. Time. One tomorrow, choose. No more,” he added, holding up a finger. “After tomorrow, no leave.” He reached out a hand and Jensen put his hand in it, but instead of shaking it, Jared raised it formally to his lips like Jensen was a lady.

Before Jensen could figure out how to respond to that, Jared turned and dove through the tunnel that exited Jensen’s bubble. 

His bubble. He’d gotten so used to staying here in such a short time, being kept like a pet or a...a mistress, enjoying the sex, being waited on, attended to. Courted. Being wanted and cared for and maybe even loved. They hadn’t had “love” come up in language lessons yet, but it was nice to think about, sometimes, as he was drifting off to sleep, sated and happy.

But was it all for his body, everything they’d done for him? From the start, sex had been part of what he was here for, but he’d thought that was all it was. Or if he’d thought Gen wanted...results, he certainly hadn’t thought he’d be carrying them! He got up and started to pace. There wasn’t much room for pacing, especially with all the plants, but his only exercise lately had been horizontal, and he needed to feel his feet moving under him.

It was crazy, what they were asking! No one had the right to ask that. Unimaginable. And what had already been done to his body, was it reversible? Or permanent? Would he go back to the way he was, or would he be stuck like this forever? Were there other effects he hadn’t even noticed yet? Would Jared and Gen be able to explain, assuming they wanted to, over the language barrier they were trying to overcome?

They’d been working hard to learn his language. Harder than he had, to tell the truth. His Latin, such as it was, he’d learned because he had no other way to talk to the only other people around, and anyway he couldn’t spend _all_ day having awesome sex with them. But their English was much better than his Latin now, because they’d been trying a lot harder than he had. He couldn’t have explained human reproduction after a few weeks in a foriegn language. Ovum, that was egg, right? Or was it ova?

They had known this was coming. They had known or guessed he would freak out about it, and they’d been trying to learn enough of his words to talk him through it, and trying to court him enough, with exotic foods and spending time with him, that he would give them a chance...a chance to…

He shuddered again at the thought of being… _implanted._

He hadn’t pushed for answers. He’d been content to be waited on and made much of because he hadn’t wanted to face his own shit, the fact that his life among humans was in the toilet. Being a sailor was his last shot at a career that would take him somewhere, and look how that turned out. He had no idea what he’d do if Jared _did_ drop him on shore tomorrow: get a job, he guessed, hopefully one that didn’t rely on how pretty his face looked. Or require marketable skills he didn’t have. And no, he wasn’t going to market his blow-job skills. It was get the nearest dead-end job or go cry on Danneel’s doorstep that all the mean sailors had thrown him off the ship, and the worst part was knowing she’d take him in and coo and make him feel better about it all.

He wasn’t going back to Danneel without having _done something_ other than be thrown off a ship three weeks out of port.

And despite the bombshell Jared had just dropped on him, he didn’t want to leave Jared and Gen yet, either. He cared about them both; he was starting to love watching Jared throw back his head with laughter, and the wicked, sly grin Gen got when she was about to pull one over on him. He loved watching them dance together in the water outside his bubble, and he looked forward to their visits for more than just the fact it was the only company he got. He wanted to spend years getting to know them, he wanted to see them with kids and wrinkles around their eyes. 

Kids that couldn’t be born, according to Jared, without his help. Without Jensen carrying them—carrying their eggs—inside him.

No. He couldn’t. How could they ask this? It was too much for anybody. He shook his head and started a slow circuit around the room, checking the plants for dead leaves and making sure they had enough water.

Too much for any _body_ , or too much for any _man_? Was he freaking out more because he’d never even thought he might have to carry another life inside him, or because they were a totally alien species and they had freaking _eggs_?

Only they weren’t alien, not really. He could read the expressions on their faces as easily as his own family’s. When Gen thought he was being a weird human or Jared was disgusted by his well-cooked fish, their noses wrinkled and eyebrows furrowed. Their faces, at least, would have looked at home in any city in the world—even in a modelling agency. It was obvious when they were delighted with him, too, which was most of the time.

He looked up past the plants, searching the waters for familiar finned shapes. Jared’s dark gray was nowhere to be seen, but Gen’s orange tail corkscrewed a little distance away, keeping her in the same spot. She caught his eye and waved.

He didn’t know how to respond. How could he sum up all the conflicted feelings rolling through him and put them into pantomime? He ran a hand through his hair, then spread both arms in a giant, helpless shrug. She read him and laughed, an effortless movement of her tail bringing her close enough to the habitat to reach out and lay a hand on it. He raised his hand to match hers without thinking.

He couldn’t help loving her. Even knowing she wanted to do unspeakable things to his mutating body.

He was so doomed.

He moved his hand a little to the left, and waited for her hand to follow the motion. Once he knew she was with him, he drew her around the side of the bubble, to where the tunnel exited. Then he broke off their little dance, and went to sit down in the tunnel pool. He didn’t have to wait long before Gen was shooting up out of the water, rising high enough for her to admire her perfect bare breasts. 

“Hi,” he said cautiously. “Salve.”

“Hi,” she said, just as uncertain. “Jared talk?” She put her hand low on her belly, where the scales of her tail flowed up over her hips. There was a slight hill there. “Ova veniet. Eggs, soon.”

She paused, and he nodded. Christ but this was awkward. How were you supposed to talk about having eggs even if you were both fluent in the same language? “I don’t know if I can...help, the way you want me to,” he told her. “I don’t know...It’s weird.” He was struggling for words, scoffing at himself silently. Weird? Seriously?

“Merfolk not choose,” Gen said. “Many yesterdays, we made. Many...ova mortuus est, eggs die. Mermaid take human, make him hold eggs. Eggs live. Keep going. Many merpeople, many humans, many yesterdays. But humans...numquam…”

“Never,” he supplied softly, afraid to guess. Humans never survived? Never went back to normal?

“Humans never like merpeople, after. Nos odio, want us dead.” She shook her head slowly, face serious and sad. “Not same, now. We—me, Jared—we not ever make human carry eggs. Give you choose. You go humans or you take eggs here.” Her hand reached unconsciously to rest low on her belly.

“And if I go?” Jensen asked. “What happens to you?” He reached out to place his hand over hers, over the slight bulge there.

“Eggs die,” she said bluntly. He winced to hear it, even though he’d expected it. “Eggs die. Me live. Jared live. You live. Your—” she gestured at his genitals, "—place, same yesterday. No problem.”

He breathed out a sigh of relief. That was something. “And if I not go?” he asked carefully.

She smiled warmly at him. God, what wouldn’t he do to see that smile again and again? What was he going to end up doing? “Tomorrow.” She held up two fingers to mean in two days. “We put eggs here,” she reached to put her hand on Jensen’s lower belly, mirroring the hand on her own. “Eggs good. You good. All happy. Many tomorrows.”

He shuddered, thinking about it, but already he was getting used to the idea.

No. No, this was what they’d wanted from him from the start. Everything they’d done for him, given him, the way they’d courted him—it was all so they could use his body. If they hadn’t needed to breed, he’d be nothing to them; he’d be dead. “Thank you for telling me,” he said stiffly. “And thank you for giving me a choice.”

Gen looked at him, questioning, hope an uncertain flicker.

He couldn’t bear to meet her eyes. “I don’t know if I can,” he repeated.

He slept alone that night. His body had gotten used to regular sex, and the absence of it was leaving him twitching. His dick kept trying to perk up, but he couldn’t bear to jerk off, not when all he’d think about would be Jared and Gen, and _eggs_...no. He lay restless and dissatisfied, staring up at the branching coral arches that helped structure his bubble, until he finally slid into an uneasy sleep.

In his dreams, Jared held him down mercilessly whie Gen put her whole hand up in him, then looked up at Jared with a pretty little moue of her mouth, saying, “He’s not big enough. We’ll have to open him up wider.”

Jared looked at her like she hung the stars in the sky, that same look Jensen had always liked to see because it said how much he loved her, and without looking at Jensen at all, he reached his big hand down to wrap around her fist. “Of course, baby. However wide you need.”

Jensen screamed as their combined hands started to force him wide, and the sound of his scream woke him up. He lay there, gasping. His traitorous dick was hard again, but he was done listening to it. Sex had been nothing but trouble, and he was about to be in a whole lot more if he didn’t get out now while he still could.

His heart felt like it was being torn apart already. Even if he loved them, they already had each other. He was being ridiculous to think they might love him back. He was a means to an end for them. He couldn’t bear how much it would hurt if they actually made that clear, especially if he’d already given them everything, let himself be vulnerable that way.

He was crying. Tears leaked from his squeezed-shut eyes, for the decision he had to make, for the eggs that would never be born. If it hurt this much now, how much worse would it get?

The dark of night was barely turning into twilight when he finally rolled himself out of his hammock, but Jared and Gen were already waiting in the shallows of the tunnel pool. Waiting for his choice.

“No,” he said. “I paenitet, nihil. I wish I could.”

The hope in Gen’s face crumpled into anguish, and she turned and fled, orange tail flukes disappearing where the tunnel started. He wanted to reach after her, apologize again, but this wasn’t something he could make better.

She had every right to never want to see him again. 

And that was probably what would happen, he realized. She’d saved his life, and asked him to help give life to her children in return, and he couldn’t do it. The debt he owed her for saving him would go unpaid. 

Jared’s face was sadder than he’d ever seen it, but Jared hadn’t gone anywhere. He was waiting for—oh. Of course. Jared had promised to bring him back to the humans if he chose not to carry the eggs. 

There was no reason to delay, but Jensen found himself looking around the habitat for one anyway. His clothes and boots were folded in a corner, untouched as they’d been since his first day here. He thought about putting them on; it would be better, once he was on land, to have them. But they’d just be in the way, swimming with Jared, and he didn’t know how far they had to go. He knew it was a petty, stupid decision that he’d probably regret later, but he didn’t want to put one last barrier between them. The clothes could stay here.

He might like a souvenir of this place, but what? Not a can of chili. Not a houseplant, even supposing it could survive seawater. He could take the can-opener, but what if someone else came here and needed to open cans?

Not a chamberpot, or fishbones. There was nothing here he could take with him, except the one thing he couldn’t bear to accept.

He shuddered less now at the thought. If he didn’t do it, who would? Not every drowning sailor would be as grateful, as willing to go along with the crazy flow of merpeople and being a kept man as he had been. No other would have the feelings he did for Jared and Gen, either. He didn’t want them to have the chance, those hypothetical future castaways: making love to Gen in his hammock, splashing each other playfully in the shallows—

He’d made his decision. It was no good second-guessing. Jared was waiting in the water. Jensen took one last deep breath of his bubble air, a miasma of green growing things and dead fish and a hell of a lot of sex, which just went to show Jensen could get used to anything, and then he walked into the water to meet Jared.

Jared’s normal glee in life was absent. He didn’t try to steal kisses or even touch Jensen. There was an awkward beat while Jensen wondered if he should reach out to him; instead, he stepped forward until the rock dropped out from under him, and his head went under.

He came back up after a moment. Jared was staring at him, still motionless: and then with a powerful lash of his tail that sloshed a wave all the way into the hotspring, he twisted himself closer and pulled Jensen under.

Jensen’s body panicked for a moment instinctively. No air-breather likes being dragged underwater, especially by something stronger and better at swimming. He started to thrash for a second before getting control of himself. Jared wasn’t going to kill him. He trusted Jared with his life. Jared had said he’d bring him to land and he would keep that promise; Jensen’s life had been in his hands all this time and he wasn’t going to freak out about it now.

Jensen made himself relax his muscles and open his eyes. 

Jared was staring at him from only a couple inches away, arms locked around him and tail twisting lazily to keep them in place. He looked concerned, but as soon as Jensen calmed himself the concern melted into a hard mask.

Jared parted his lips, but didn’t lean forward. He was going to make Jensen be the one to close the distance.

If that was the way it had to be, fine. Jensen leaned in and sealed his mouth over Jared’s. Jared didn’t suck his breath out: Jensen had to push his air into Jared’s mouth, feeling a huff of water coming out as air displaced it. Then he sucked the air back in, and Jared let him: it was cool and fishy-tasting, but it was air and his lungs were grateful.

After the first breath, Jared spun them around and they went streaking through the tunnel, corals growing in from the sides, but none of them touched their skin: Jared was nimble despite their speed. And then they popped back out into the weak filtered sunlight of dawn, ocean stretching in every direction, limitless. The surface shimmered distantly above them, pink and red and orange.

Jensen couldn’t keep his eyes open very long with the water rushing past, and he could feel them watering even shut tight. It made it almost irrelevant if he cried or not; the ocean didn’t care.

Jared was going mostly horizontal, only gradually getting closer to the surface. His tail beat steadily, eating up the distance. The water was cold around them, Jared warm by comparison, though not as warm as Jensen. Not as warm as a human would be. Jensen wrapped his arms around him and concentrated on breathing steadily. If merfolk were warm like humans, they could incubate their own eggs, and they wouldn’t be getting rid of Jensen right now—but maybe they’d have never brought him to their undersea home in the first place. He didn’t want this to end, didn’t want to get dropped off on some strange shore alone. But it didn’t matter what he wanted.

No. He wasn’t being fair. Jared _was_ doing what Jensen wanted, what he’d _chosen._ A decision he’d only made because he couldn’t bear to think of the alternative…

Was he a coward? Was he giving up on real love with Jared and Gen because he was socially conditioned to think putting eggs in a guy was gross and wrong? 

Was he going to spend the rest of his life regretting his decision?

The answer, once he put it like that, was obvious, and he started struggling against Jared’s hold. Jared just held him tighter at first, confused. But when Jensen tore his mouth away, he realized something was wrong, and darted up towards the surface.

Jensen got tired of holding his breath before they reached it, but at last they burst up into the air, real warm sweet fresh air like he hadn’t tasted in weeks. All he could do for a moment was breathe deeply.

But Jared was looking at him impatiently, trying to figure out why he’d suddenly interrupted the journey.

“Let’s go back,” Jensen panted at him, gripping his shoulder urgently. “I want to go back, I’m sorry.”

“Go back,” Jared repeated, not understanding. “I take you back.”

“Not to humans,” Jensen said, wishing they could understand each other better. “Back to Gen, ad Genevefa.”

“No. Gen sad. Quae neque videre, no see, too sad.” Jared was trying to explain, like he thought Jensen might be too dumb to have gotten that. Jared was upset, too, but he was trying…“I bring you to humans.” He took hold of Jensen again, and started swimming the same way they’d been going.

“No!” Jensen struggled again. At least his face was above water, for now. But Jared was too strong, and Jensen might as well have been fighting a riptide. His mouth filled with water when he tried to talk more, and then he was too busy trying to breathe instead of choke to do anything.

When he could see again, there was land visible across the waves, a wide golden beach and green palm trees beyond it, and a town lying to one side. A couple distant boats sliced through the waves. Too soon, they were rushing in to shore, diving under the breakers as the waves kicked up high in their rush to ground themselves. Jensen felt sand under his hands and knees as Jared released him and turned away. “Wait,” Jensen begged, coughed. “Don’t go.”

Jared was already out of reach, facing away like he couldn’t stand to drag this out, but he paused, listening.

Jensen took a deep breath. “I changed my choice. I want to go back with you.” He hesitated, but Jared looked incredulous, like he couldn’t let himself believe. He had to be clear, but that didn’t make it easy to say. “I want your eggs.” He put a hand on his low belly, the motion Gen had used.

Jared twisted and thrashed, trying to turn around. His usual grace was difficult in only a few inches of rushing, sandy water. He put one hand out to touch the side of Jensen’s face, staring: Jensen still knelt, waves push-pulling around them. “True?” he demanded, doubt and hope at war in his face. “Really?”

“Really, really true,” Jensen said, half-laughing with relief. Jared was still here, hadn’t swum off despite anything Jensen said; he hadn’t lost them both forever. The sun was high in the sky, and it had barely been dawn when they started swimming. He leaned in and kissed Jared for real.

Jared let him, but then pulled away to fix him with a look. “Go back to Gen, no choose different again.”

Jensen held his gaze as steadily as he could in the waves. “Will I be okay?”

“Yes. No dead. No pain, cur non ut, no reason to no like.” Jared was earnest, but there was a hint of doubt on his face. “You see. Live many tomorrows.”

Jesus god, what was Jensen letting himself in for? Well, he’d take Jared at his word that it wouldn’t kill him. “Then yes. Okay,” Jensen said. “No more changing my choice.” It didn’t matter what happened, even if he hated it. The past few hours showed he couldn’t handle even half a day of thinking he might never know what would have happened, or that he would never see Gen and Jared again.

He went in for another kiss, slow and sweet, putting all his heart into it. And this time, finally, Jared kissed him back. He stopped holding himself rigid and apart, finally let himself believe Jensen. Jensen smiled into the kiss; some things communicated better than words, and in this kiss he could feel how much Jared loved him.


	3. Fit To Live

The journey back to the coral nest was vastly different from the journey away. Jensen let his hands wander freely as their bodies undulated together, mouths pressed close to breathe the same breath, and Jared returned his affection in full. By the time the gentle slopes of the merfolk’s reef rose into view from the dark depths of the deeper seafloor around it, Jensen was so turned on he couldn’t think straight. All he wanted was to get laid, as soon as possible.

Gen was waiting outside their dome, but when she saw Jensen with Jared she cried out, her face twisting with anguish. Jared dropped Jensen behind him to face her.

Jensen held his breath and tread water to stay put.

Gen was talking a mile a minute in the burbling underwater mer language to Jared, while Jared held his hands out and tried to placate her. Jensen couldn’t understand a word of it, but eventually Gen’s tones trailed off in a question and Jared turned back to Jensen, reaching with an outstretched hand.

Jensen figured that was a clear cue, and swam forward to take it. His kicking and stroking through the water felt clumsy after their effortless tail-sweeps. But he reached Jared, and Jared drew him by the hand beside him.

His lungs were starting to burn, but he didn’t care about that right now. He had to tell Gen it was okay, that he’d changed his mind.

She was close enough to touch, so he did. His free hand caressed her face, lightly, like the first time she’d touched him, when he’d been drowning. She’d saved him then. He drew his hand down her body, lighter brushes of fingertips, until it was hovering over her lower abdomen, right where she’d put her own hand after their first time. Not quite touching, not yet. He put his hand on his his own lower abdomen instead.

It still felt so strange for him to make that gesture, even though this was the second time. As strange as what it meant, what was going to happen.

But he could see hope, fragile as a shimmer of light, beginning to transform Gen’s face. She put her own hand on his cheek, asking, he thought, if he really meant it?

He nodded, and put his own hand over hers. It covered her fine-boned fingers completely.

She darted in for a kiss, and he could breathe again: not just physical oxygen flooding into him, but also the overwhelming relief he felt that he hadn’t lost this, he hadn’t screwed it up. They were both still with him.

They didn’t waste time. Gen maneuvered him through the tunnel to the little air bubble room, and Jared followed closely. Jensen’s room. He was happy to be back in it, but more than anything else right now, his body was making demands. He wanted Jared’s and Gen’s hands on him, their bodies rocking close to his, and he wanted it all _now_ with a hunger that shocked him. He had _never_ been this desperate for sex before in his life.

He gasped deep breaths, breathing in the plants-and-fish-and-sex-scented air of their little safe haven. It was close and humid, especially after breathing the open air over the ocean, but he didn’t care. What he cared about was that Jared was reaching down to touch him, for the first time since he’d discovered his body was changing without his permission, touch him in the little slit that had opened up beneath his balls. He shuddered and let him explore; it felt sensitive and strange, the edges stiff and unyielding at first like the mer-slits were, until Jared stroked expertly and they relaxed.

Gen kissed him, fingers tracing his lower belly, still flat and hard. And ticklish. Something in the tension of her body said she wanted to be urgent, but her lips were gentle on his, her hands unhurried.

They hadn’t even left the water, all three of them in the deep end of the entrance pool, only their heads above water. Jensen’s fingers and toes should have pruned up like crazy by now, but they felt normal. A side effect of the changes they’d made to his body? Jared was pressed close behind him, while Gen sandwiched him from the front, their long, powerful tails barely having to move in order to keep the three of them in position. Jensen certainly wasn’t doing anything to help. He was lost in sensation.

He could feel Jared’s cock extruding from its slit behind him, rubbing gently against his ass in time with their rocking. He pushed back automatically, but Jared didn’t go for his asshole this time—he used his hand to guide the tip forward and into the new slit. 

Jensen tried to startle but his body was too blissed-out to cooperate. Well, it was good it tapered so much more than a human dick: the tip was barely bigger than a finger. But it still felt huge in his brand-new hole. He made a nervous noise—how was he going to fit more?—but Gen shushed him, running her hands over his shoulders and pecs to soothe him. Jared didn’t thrust in all at once, just kept up a gentle rocking in place, and Jensen realized it didn’t hurt. That stretched feeling was rapidly fading, and his body was adjusting more quickly than he’d have believed possible, starting to feel looser around the intrusion. Like he wanted more.

Jared’s eyes were on him, waiting for him to relax, and as soon as he did he slid in a little farther, a little deeper. Again he felt stretched, and again there was nothing but gentle undulations until it subsided. “More,” he said. Not pleaded. His breath came out with a faint whine.

Little by little, Jared’s dick went into him, the wide base going even slower than the tip had. The hours rolled by and the sun set, and even then he was conscious that this shouldn’t be humanly possible; people didn’t just stretch like this no matter how patient you were. But his hole, which had been barely fingertip-sized, was now accommodating most of the biggest dick he’d ever seen, and it didn’t hurt. The slippery fluid Jared produced was all over, inside him, coating his thighs and belly and back. Gen rubbed her fingers in it and then fed it to him, and he licked and swallowed and kissed her. He shouldn’t be able to stay hard for this long, either; he’d thought he was aroused from his long teasing swim with Jared and two days without sex and finally resolving his rollercoaster of emotion about leaving, but—this was something more, this level of pleasure. Something outside normal human bounds. 

If merman secretions were what was changing him, which Jensen was now pretty sure they were, well, he’d committed anyway, whether he knew what he was getting into or not. He’d let them ease the way as much as possible. He felt unbelievably stuffed, with Jared’s dick up inside a place he didn’t even use to have, and at the same time he felt like it was only the beginning. It was crazy, beyond crazy, but he wanted to stretch more than he already had, to see his belly bulging out from everything they put in him, to feel like he couldn’t take another bit. He knew he wasn’t anywhere close to full, not as full as he could be.

The light had gotten dimmer and deeper blue and finally disappeared, so that the only light was from little phosphorescent glows in the water. The merfolk cultivated them, Jensen thought, but they weren’t bright enough to see by. Always before, when the twilight faded, he’d just slept, with or without Jared or Gen curled up with him. 

Jared wedged himself a little further in and they both panted. There was no sleeping now. He wasn’t even tired, despite the longest sex he’d ever had. His mind was oddly clear and focused on the physical sensations sweeping through him, the water rippling against his skin, Gen’s gentle caresses in front of him except where she turned mischievous and nipped or dug her nails in. The air was hot and close on his face, holding the familiar smells of lush plants and fish. Jared’s giant retractable dick had made itself at home in him inch by painstaking inch, and his own dick still hung heavy and hard, floating in the currents of water around their bodies. It was strange to feel so aroused but at the same time not urgent about it; it didn’t feel like he was going to die of blue balls, it just felt like he was floating on neverending waves of pleasure.

Jared’s dick sank the final quarter-inch home while Jensen was floating in that feeling. His hands pulled Jensen backward onto him, helping get that last bit seated inside him, and Jared’s hips pressed suddenly up against his ass. Jensen’s mouth opened as he felt it stretch. So full, so unbelievably, perfectly filled, like he’d been made for this, like Jared’s dick was a perfectly shaped key to his—and then he remembered that his hole _had_ been made for this, that Jared had dug out a place for himself in Jensen and settled in there like it was his new home.

He panted and twisted around to kiss Jared, feeling the need to reestablish that human connection, a familiar anchor in a strange ocean of sensation. Jared kissed him back joyfully, kissing with his whole heart like he had since Jensen met him. Jensen’s new slit edges shuddered and relaxed a tiny bit more, finally fully accepting the intrusive flesh spearing him open. 

Gen made a low, growly purring sound and grabbed Jared’s head, nudging Jensen to the side so that she could kiss her mate. He watched their tongues play. She was thanking him, gratitude and wonder and that edge of desperate _need_ getting stronger. Thanking Jared for _him,_ Jensen realized, for bringing him back and opening him up like this. He was caught on Jared’s giant dick like a fish squirming on a hook, only he had no desire to get free. And what she was going to do with him after this—he hadn’t forgotten. She was going to fill him up with her eggs. Her stomach felt like a much bigger bulge than he’d thought, he realized, now that it was so close. Big enough she’d never be mistaken for anything but pregnant, now. 

He wondered if his stomach was going to bulge that much with the eggs in it, if he was going to look like a pregnant woman would…

“Hey,” Jared said softly, pulling away from the kiss when he felt Jensen start to tense up. He tilted his chin so Jensen would look him in the eyes. “OK. You Ok.”

“Relaxat,” Gen added, smoothing his salt-encrusted hair. “You can.”

Jensen wanted to argue _what if I can’t?_ But he couldn’t think of any way to say it that didn’t sound too whiny, so he kept silent. Pregnancy had never seemed so terrifying as it did now and he wondered how women went through it at all. It would be easier to let the human race die out, and every other race that relied on growing babies on the inside. Trees didn’t do that shit, they just spread their pollen on the wind. That seemed vastly more sensible than the current system. But Jensen’s new merman mate had himself wedged up between Jensen’s legs, and he couldn’t escape if he wanted to. 

Despite his nerves and doubts, he didn’t actually want to escape, when it came down to it. The chemistry of what was happening was sizzling through his bloodstream, burning pathways of pleasure through his body. He wanted to be given more, to feel more of the heady drug of Jared’s come, to have them fill him up like he was now, only… ”More,” he gasped.

It was an English word they knew; Gen smiled. But Jared started to withdraw, not just a little back-and-forth, but pulling away and all the way out. Jensen clenched in vain—no way to keep him in. He tried to reach back and clutch at Jared in mindless protest at the feeling of being emptied out, but Jared’s skin was slippery and his scales worse, covered with whatever the stuff was his dick secreted. He left and though he still held Jensen, lined up all along his back, it wasn’t enough.

Gen’s expression went tender and hungry, focusing in on him. Jensen wondered how lost he looked. She drew her hands from his face all the way down his sides to his thighs, every bit of skin contact setting off singing nerve endings, and firmly lifted and tugged until his legs were wrapped around her hips. Her tail trailed below them, waving gently while her hands on his ass and thighs adjusted his position according to unknown but exacting standards, until it was just right. Then, with a determined look in her eyes, she released her breath, finally, and tucked her head into his neck, arms going around his back while his arms held her even tighter. There was nothing for a long, tense moment, and then he felt movement at his slit.

It was lined up perfectly with her slit, he realized. And something was coming out of her.

It had been a long time since the edges of his slit had been stiff and resistant to Jared’s first gentle advances. Now they were soft and warm, skin wrinkly from having expanded so much, and slick mucous clung everywhere on his skin, even in the water.

What came out of her wasn’t an egg, not yet. The fleshy organ was nearly as wide as Jared had been at the base, and it pushed into him in a series of pulses that went much faster than Jared had. At least it didn’t seem to widen the way he did: the tip was as big as the rest of it got, a long smooth column that just kept coming and coming. It seated all the way in him with a solid almost-thunk, shaking Jensen. Jared gasped, behind them. 

He felt Jared’s hand come around and between him and Gen, splaying possessively over his lower abdomen and rubbing there. He wondered if he could feel the shape of Gen’s—Gen’s mermaid organ, whatever it was called—through Jensen’s skin. It felt like they were pressing a wall of his flesh between them; it seemed impossible that they couldn’t feel each other. Jared said something in Latin to Gen, too quick for Jensen to catch. A strange burble trilled off the end of the words—their underwater language didn’t come out right in the air, so they habitually spoke Latin above the water’s surface—so Jared must have said something Latin didn’t have a word for.

She said something back to him, just as quick, but he didn’t need a translation; her eyes might as well be shining hearts out of the darkness at her mate, her true mate, who’d been with her longer than Jensen. For a moment he felt terribly left out, even pinned between their bodies. He wasn’t one of them, not really, he was just a conveniently warm human…

No. They’d shown him with gifts and touch and words and letting him go how much they cared about him, too. He wasn’t going to be so petty he’d get jealous that they loved each other. 

He bent his head to examine the bulge of Gen’s stomach. Could he feel individual egg lumps in her? How big _were_ these eggs, anyway?

It seemed incredible that every single one of the merpeople he’d seen swimming around outside of his bubble-dome had once been an egg implanted in a human. Poor hapless shipwrecked humans, probably, drowning like Jensen had been until a merman or mermaid rescued them. He remembered Gen telling him that humans wanted to kill the merpeople after carrying their eggs; maybe most of the merfolk weren’t as careful of human feelings as Jared and Gen had been of his. Or maybe they had more reason than he knew.

For all the cautionary tales about mermaids, mermen were hardly ever even mentioned. None of the tales said anything about being used for egg laying, either, but then what sailor would tell that tale, whether he’d escaped it or not? Jensen couldn’t imagine talking about this to a crowd in a bar, no matter how many drinks he’d had. 

Gen made a tiny noise, and then a bigger one, and then a very unladylike grunt. Where they were connected, he could feel her organ widening, as something moved inside it. An egg, it had to be, and it was passing into his body. His new channel strained again to accept the stretch; it had reached its limit, and every additional bit it was coaxed open strummed his nerve endings like taut strings. But then the egg was through, it was in him, and it settled under Jared’s hand, his insides deforming easily around it. Jensen poked at his belly where he could feel it, fascinated despite himself. Gen had time for a tired grin at him before it started all over, and he felt the next egg following the same path. Jared’s hand dropped down to cup his cock, not moving urgently yet. Jensen took a deep breath. It wasn’t too bad, so far.

He lost count around a dozen, when he came the first time. It went on after that, maybe twenty or thirty eggs total, if he had to guess. He lost count of how many times he came, too. In the end, when Gen finally pulled out of him, Jensen couldn’t be bothered to crawl to his hammock; he just let the merfolk help heave him up into the shallows and that was that. He rolled onto his back and looked down at the little mound of his belly, still streaked with clear mucous and his own white come. It was rounded like he’d eaten a couple Thanksgiving dinners in a row, only sitting lower than his stomach, and if he dug his fingers in, he could feel the squishy blobs of the eggs moving around inside him. But Jared looked alarmed when he poked himself too hard, so he stopped. Wouldn’t want to damage the eggs after going to all this trouble. Then he imagined one of them being born with a crooked spine or something because he’d poked it too hard, and he hurriedly smoothed his hand over his skin in useless apology.

“Sleep,” Gen said, pushing herself up beside him, smiling but exhausted. She laid her head on his shoulder and set to follow her own advice, and Jared settled in on his other side. The rock was hard but smooth, and the shallow water eased their weight. It was comfortable enough—or anyway, it beat moving.

Sleep. Okay. Jensen didn’t exactly decide to stop worrying, but when he closed his eyes, he dreamed of colorful, scaly fishtails sparkling in the sunlight.

For the next couple days Gen and Jared were all over him, a hand checking on his bulge or even putting their ears to Jensen’s abdomen. He didn’t know what they were listening for; as far as he could tell, the eggs hadn’t done anything whatsoever since making their home inside him. The whole thing was weird, yes, still; but surprisingly, he got used to it almost right away. In spite of the bizarre situation, he actually started to get bored, so he made a point of doubling down on language lesson time. The value of good communication was not something he could doubt anymore.

After three days, he managed to ask what they were listening for.

“If egg alive,” Jared explained. “Maybe no live.”

“What…” Jensen tried to understand, feeling shocked. This couldn’t all be for _nothing_. “You’re saying we might have been too late, coming back? They might have all died anyway?” He felt a chill at the idea, and then he noticed he was holding his own stomach this time, fingers spread wide protectively.

“No,” Jared said, brow furrowing. Jensen felt an irrational swoop of relief even as Jared went on, carefully. “Most merfolk eggs die. Body not right.” He swept a hand down the scales of his tail, then brought it up to trace the uneven line where the skin of his torso began to turn into scales. He struggled for words. “Hard to…hard to grow right. Maybe one live, maybe no egg live. Same if we no swim to human place.”

Twenty or thirty eggs, and it was fifty-fifty that even one would survive? That couldn’t be natural.

“Merfolk always many eggs die,” Gen shook her head. “Since first angry human magic make first mermaid, always.”

Of course it was all because of a curse. Jensen didn’t know much about sorcerers or witches, except that it was a bad idea to cross them. The merfolk were still being screwed over by their distant ancestor’s curse. He wondered if the caster had meant to let them reproduce at all, or if they had made it hellishly difficult on purpose. Half fish, half human: it was a wonder that the merfolk bodies functioned at all. 

If his eggs _couldn’t_ function, couldn’t live...he was only just getting used to the idea he was carrying new life inside him, and then to have it yanked away like this? “When will we know?” he asked, voice harsh with sudden nerves. If there was nothing in him after all, just lifeless lumps, what did that mean? Would they try again? “When…?”

“Egg live, three yesterdays,” Gen said helpfully, “or we no fuck. No give you dead eggs only.”

“Okay. At least one was alive three days ago,” Jensen said slowly. “But you don’t know yet if it will keep growing.”

“If one live, it…” she paused for a word, frustrated, then made two fists and brought them together, suddenly opening her hands to clasp around each other, “...with empty egg. More food, grow. Do with empty egg again until no more food. Then come out. You feel,” she caressed his bulge where the eggs lay, “you feel here. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow. If nothing,” she shrugged and looked away, blinking, “then nothing.”

If he did have a living egg, it was going to consume the other eggs. Jensen blinked. Weird, and gross, and he was getting sick of curveballs. But okay. He’d know soon.

He didn’t ask if they’d take him back if it failed. He didn’t think he’d want to go back. Nothing to show but another failure to chalk up on his life’s tally board. He could imagine it all too well, living the rest of his life with the knowledge he was so bad at being a sailor he’d been thrown off a ship and so bad at life in general he’d failed at being a sex slave to freaky merbreeders. 

That he’d failed at the closest thing he’d ever had to love, if he couldn’t give Gen and Jared the living egg-baby they wanted from him.

He wondered how many tries it might take, if they had to start over. Just how biologically difficult could it be to combine a fish tail with a human torso? Jensen was afraid he didn’t actually want to know the answer to that. Maybe he could talk them into letting him wander around some tiny deserted island sometimes, so he could feel the sun’s heat. Breathe fresh air. Not let his tan disappear. He kept getting paler, here in his underwater grotto where the sun was always dim.

If they had to try again, would they want to keep him here for months or years while they tried, time after time? He wanted to stay with them, but he could feel the clear walls around him, too. How long before it felt like a prison no matter how much love they showered on him, no matter how much he wanted to love them back?

In another few hours, Jensen was pacing. He couldn’t help himself. It didn’t matter that it took him out of arm’s reach of Jared and Gen, even when their worried eyes tracked him across from one rack of potted plants to the other; he’d done nothing but lie around fucking for weeks, and he had to _move_ or he’d go crazy. 

He didn’t stop pacing even when the other merfolk—they’d always kept a careful distance before—came closer, watching him intently. All the ones he saw looked older than Jared and Gen, stern and proud, staring down at him from above. The plants covered most of the view down low, and Jensen supposed that there was no reason merfolk with an entire ocean to swim in had to stay close to the seafloor, like humans tied to the ground; but it still felt like they were looking down at him in more than just the literal sense. Some were a _lot_ older, white hair drifting behind them and wrinkled faces looking odd without gravity pulling the skin down. They stared, but didn’t look friendly: no smiling or waving, not like Jared and Gen. 

None of them were his age, like Jared and Gen were, and he saw no children at all.

His hand rested on his belly. The bulge wasn’t as big as a pregnant woman’s would have been, at least not a later-stage pregnant woman. Easier to imagine he’d gotten way too into a hotdog-eating contest at the fair. Maybe if he thought of it like that, it would be less weird.

Hotdog eaters never held their breath waiting to feel signs of life from inside them.

“Why do they stare at me?” he finally blurted out to Gen, whirling away from the ocean view. She and Jared had barely left the grotto since the...the implantation, he guessed. But they had almost completely ignored the visitors. He took a break from pacing and sat in his hammock, kicking the ground to swing himself.

“Humans…” Gen struggled for a word in English and resorted to Latin. “Nos es curiosus homines.”

“‘We are curious about humans,’” Jensen translated. She nodded. “Why? You’re the ones who hide from us.”

“We need you…” she gestured to his stomach. “But humans hate carry eggs. All merfolk, day one, humans hate. No talk, no explain. Long ago learn talk human, Latin. Say what eggs do. Humans say no. Merfolk do eggs in humans after say no. Humans hate more. Time go. Humans no talk Latin, merfolk no talk. Until us, until you.”

“You asked me,” Jensen said slowly. “You made sure you could ask me even though none of the rest of your people have ever gotten a human to agree. And you would have...you would have actually let me go?” He looked at Jared, who looked back at him seriously, not trying to confirm, just letting Jensen work through it. 

He had to reexamine that day. None of the other merfolk had been visible when they left the tunnel in the dim twilight of dawn, and for the first time he wondered what they thought of letting him go. The overwhelming desire that Jensen had felt during the implantation, that hadn’t been just him—Jared and Gen had felt the same crazy extended lust. They hadn’t made him leave just because they had no further use for him if he wouldn’t carry the eggs, he’d realized; it would have been impossible for the three of them to remain in the same space and _not_ have wild, egg-transferring sex. The hormone cascade was too powerful. He wondered if hormones had affected him on that long miserable swim away from the habitat, breathing Jared’s air until he didn’t want to leave them anymore—but there was no way to answer that question, and he didn’t regret his choice, so he decided it didn’t matter. 

Probably even normal mundane human sex would never happen without hormones, anyway. 

But Jared and Gen had known what to expect, unlike him. Would they have really gone through that frenzy with only each other, giving up on their eggs, if Jensen had chosen to leave? Because they cared about what he wanted that much? 

He met Jared’s eyes, still serious and level. No, he decided. This was bigger than him. They’d been assiduous about learning to talk with him from the start. “Because you wanted to make things different,” he realized. “You went against what everyone before you has done because you wanted to be better than that.”

Jared nodded, acknowledging. “Too much hate, too many years,” he said. “Too many humans now. Too few merfolk.”

“Need change,” Gen said, sure and decisive, eyes dark. “No tomorrows with only hate.”

This was the answer, why he was here. Jensen understood now—it wasn’t just that they wanted a baby. It was bigger than that. They wanted a future for all their people. He stood up from the hammock—and froze as he felt something inside him shift suddenly, like a physical barrier had given way. He touched his lower belly automatically. The feeling was unmistakable: he didn’t need to see an x-ray to know that two eggs had just merged, pressed together into a single larger egg-membrane. 

Dazed, he looked at Gen and Jared and grinned loopily. “Your baby is alive.” 

Gen gasped and Jared made an abortive jerking motion—Jensen could tell Jared wanted to get his hands on Jensen’s stomach to feel for himself, even across the bare rock between the pool and Jensen’s hammock.

“Not our baby,” Gen said firmly, pointing between herself and Jared. Then she pointed between Jensen and Jared and herself. “ _Our_ baby.”

Jensen felt a shock. It hadn’t occurred to him to think of it that way until she said it, but…”Okay,” he said softly. “Yes. Our baby.” He moved to ease himself into the shallows of the pool. He didn’t feel like pacing anymore. Love was welling up from inside him—a true feeling, or just a biochemical reaction, a side effect of the curse that made the first mermaid? A long-ago witch or pissed-off god had been furious enough to make some poor human or humans live out the rest of their days as half-fish sex fiends trapped forever in the ocean. He wondered again if the curse-caster had meant for the curse to survive generations, or if they’d assumed reproduction would be impossible. Or if they’d thought through their magic’s effects at all.

Jensen reached out for Gen’s and Jared’s hands and carefully placed them on his belly, even though he hadn’t felt any more movement since that first shift. The merfolk’s future was living in him right now, and it had just let him know it was still kicking. Jensen felt a fierce pride and protectiveness for his unborn child. His child. It was the first time he’d thought of it that way, instead of as Jared’s and Gen’s baby or just “the egg.” But they wanted it to belong to all three of them. He wondered what effect it would have on a culture, that everybody had three parents.

And that each and every human parent would have hated their merfolk babies, he reminded himself. Maybe some would have reconciled, accepted events with what good grace they could muster, aided by the hormonal cocktails inflicted on their bodies. But Jensen knew a lot of men would have let their hatred burn like a banked fire, and taken their feelings out on the babies once they were safely out of their bodies. No wonder the merfolk outside the grotto stared at him without smiling. They must crave that parental love and resent humans for refusing it at the same time.

This time was going to be different. Jared and Gen had begun the work of breaking the cycle, and now that Jensen understood a little better what they were doing, he wanted to help. What would it take for merfolk to coexist with human society? Especially as humans kept expanding. It wouldn’t be easy, but...maybe he could set up an advertisement on the Internet for people who wanted to carry mer-eggs? He’d probably get a few responses. Weird, creepy, insane humans, very possibly, but it would be something. 

But the trick would be keeping it safe for the merfolk. Could humans even be allowed to know the merfolk existed? Probably not, actually. Humans were too casually destructive for Jensen to feel comfortable letting this go public. The mers had seen fit to hide themselves away long enough ago that they were only legend, and he didn’t think humans had gotten much more enlightened since then. What would he have told people if he _had_ walked ashore, anyway? That he’d been floating in the sea for weeks until he drifted close enough to land? Maybe he’d have made up a desert island with a nice supply of coconuts.

His mind kept turning over the problem even as he snuggled into Jared’s and Gen’s arms. He pointedly ignored any other merfolk staring from outside their bubble. The three of them were going to have a fine little merbaby, and it was going to grow up feeling so loved that it would never have to rape people just for a chance of a kid of its own. Their kid would never find it impossible to find a human willing to love and be loved in return.

Jensen didn’t know how yet, but he was going to make sure of it.

Each egg popped more quickly than the one before, over the next weeks. The day three eggs popped from morning to night, Jensen started wondering if he’d lost count of how many there were, spiralling high on that pleasure loop—he had started prodding his lower abdomen thoughtfully, trying to see if he could count distinct shapes—but then Jared looked at his belly closely and announced, “It is time.” 

“Time?” Jensen was confused. Surely pregnancies lasted much longer than this. It had been less than a month, the moon waxing close to full for the first time since the implantation. One month while the eggs grew in Gen, then another while the living one kept growing in Jensen. But then he shook his head. He was trying to apply human logic to something that was not, at any stage, anything like expected human functions. How long did fish spend in eggs before they hatched? That was probably just as irrelevant to the question, really. Why shouldn’t merbabies be born at two months? What did he know? “Of course. Time. What happens now?”

Jared’s and Gen’s English had gotten much better, especially since they weren’t nearly as sex-driven now as they had been. When Jensen wanted sex, they were happy to oblige him, but left to their own drives, they seemed to want to spend most of their time cuddling, touching the baby bump, and bringing new fish and plants to decorate the bubble with. Jensen had even talked them into a few surface trips. There was never any land in sight; but getting to see real unfiltered sunlight and breathe fresh sea air had made him feel better. And the judgemental stares of the other sea folk seemed easier to bear on days when he could look out over a wide, limitless horizon.

“Relax,” Gen said, grinning openly at him. “Egg break open inside you, water come out. We make here soft,” her hand drifted down to touch his slit, “soft and open wide, baby comes out.” 

“That’s it, huh?” Jensen breathed in. “How much will it hurt?” He wasn’t half as big as a pregnant woman would be, but he also wasn’t designed for this, and the egg inside him had to be far bigger now than when it had gone in, after consuming all the unused eggs. 

“It won’t hurt,” Jared said, looking at him puzzled. “You feel good. Feel good when eggs go in, right?”

“Right, but…” Jensen didn’t believe that it wouldn’t hurt. That seemed like just the sort of thing everybody would say whether it was true or not. “I guess I’ll find out.”

“You will,” Jared swooped in and kissed him. “Soon.” His hands started to roam over Jensen’s body, Gen’s too, but even though it was the first time since the egg transfer that they’d been so eager for sex, Jensen couldn’t get in the mood. The hormone cocktail that had carried him through the last time had retreated, and instead all he could think about was every horror story he’d ever heard about childbirth and the hazards associated with it: that people were insane for trying to do it outside a hospital, that women bled out, or died, or the baby got stuck upside down and wouldn’t budge, and labor lasted for days without end and oh god, where were his modern anaesthetics when he needed them? Or a doctor helpfully standing by to perform a C-section?

He couldn’t be expected to feel like having sex now. He pushed the hands away from him and buried his head in his arms. “How long is it going to last?” he mumbled miserably.

Gen made a sharp, exasperated sound, like she thought he was being ridiculous. “It takes how long it takes,” she said. “You want it to take longer?”

“No!” Jensen got up and started pacing again, restless in his small space. He wouldn’t have signed up to live in a ship’s berth if he was bothered by small spaces, but so long in here would wear on anybody. Yes, he’d gotten to swim a little, but his legs weren’t made for swimming the way they were for walking, and there was something to the feeling of propelling himself on solid ground that he never got from floundering around like a particularly inept fish. It didn’t help that the merfolk couldn’t make an ungraceful move in the water if they tried.

Four steps, turn. Four steps, turn. He’d made triangles and squares and even spent a day once playing with about-faces sharp enough to send him in star patterns, avoiding the pool in the center of the little space.

Pacing was supposed to be good for labor, right? Jensen paced and fretted until he felt the last, biggest bubble burst inside him, and clear, mucousy fluid came dribbling out of him, running down his leg like he’d lost control of his bladder. There were no muscles he could clench to stop it, and it was the grossest thing he’d experienced yet. Worse than eating raw fish, worse than doing all his waste in a little chamberpot.

Reluctantly, he returned to the pool. It was better than tracking filth all over the floor. At least the water would wash it away. He flinched away when Gen tried to touch him, though. “I can’t enjoy sex right now,” he told her.

“Jensen,” Jared said, and waited till he looked up. “Good sex is how your slit opens for the baby to come,” he explained patiently. The language study had benefited all of them. “Baby won’t come if you don’t let us help you.”

“What do you mean it _won’t come out_?” Jensen’s voice sounded high-pitched even to himself. “Babies always come out!”

“You mean humans can’t keep babies in until a good time?” Gen asked, brow furrowing. “What if you’re out fishing?”

“The baby comes anyway,” Jensen said. “Women try not to travel much when it gets close to time for them.”

Both Jared and Gen looked disturbed at the idea of voluntarily curtailing their freedoms like this. “Is that why women don’t sail ships as much?” Gen demanded.

“Well...one reason, maybe,” Jensen hedged, rather than try to explain the history of gender relations. He was calming down. Gen and Jared plainly didn’t think childbirth was all that much to get upset about, and the last thing he needed was more reminders that there were more differences than similarities between human reproduction and this nutball process. His hand drifted across his stomach, and he felt a tiny yet distinct fluttering movement. A kick. Was it still a kick if it was a tail? Jensen smiled despite himself. Now that the thick egg membrane wasn’t insulating him from the baby anymore…

“All right. If we have to encourage this baby out into the world...” he said, and slid into the water between them. Jared and Gen swarmed him immediately, stroking and kissing enthusiastically. But it was too much, too fast. “Wait, woah, take it easy…”

“Why?” Jared asked, backing up. But not far. “You tired?”

“I’ll show you tired,” Jensen mock-growled. Once he let his body relax, it was revving up to have sex after all. “Let me fuck you.”

“Oh?” Jared’s mouth curled up in a smirk. “Good. Nice change.”

That...Jensen forgot his nerves, grabbed Jared’s arms and rolled over on top of him, grinning down into his face. It was true that they hadn’t done it this way for a long time, even though they used to, before the transfer. Jensen hadn’t pushed for it, in the past month, since Jared hadn’t been initiating sex...and Jensen had enjoyed being fucked more than he would have thought possible. But now he felt like _reminding_ Jared of what it felt like…

Jensen dropped slow kisses on him and Jared groaned.

Gen traded her attention from Jensen’s neck to Jared’s chest, peppering lighter kisses around before sucking a slow, wet circle just above his nipple. 

Jensen’s legs lay next to Jared’s tail, his weight on his side to avoid pressing on the egg bulge. After the implantation, he’d given up even the boxers he still occasionally wore, not liking the way the waistband pressed. His hand skated down Jared’s body, over the hard planes of his abs and the line where his scales started. He could feel the vast muscles of the tail, but he was looking for one thing and his fingers found it.

Jared caught his breath as Jensen stroked his slit, coaxing it to soften. His fingers tangled in Jensen’s hair, long and messy after so long without scissors. Jensen smiled.

Gen pushed up to kiss them both, then twisted herself down and snaked her tongue in between Jensen’s fingers, tracing the seam of Jared’s slit until she could lick inside it. Sooner than Jensen would have dared, she was urging him to shift until his cock could press into Jared’s slit. He groaned and Jared laughed breathlessly under him.

He could feel Jared’s dick, sliding alongside his without leaving his body, and it made him burn hotter. He dug his toes into the ground and _thrust_ into that heavenly wet sheath—not hot, no, that was what had started all this, but warm and welcoming—Gen took Jared’s hand and brought it to her tailslit, pressed closer to rub her breasts against Jensen’s side and arm as he fucked her mate, his mate, _their_ mate...

Afterwards, Gen kissed Jensen's slit open as he lay boneless, then traded off with Jared when she grew tired and made Jensen kiss her slit instead. Jared set to opening up with a will, using his hand in the end to open him up wider, and all Jensen could think was that this wasn’t like the nightmare he’d had at all.

The baby slithered out into Jared’s waiting hands with a lot less fuss than Jensen was expecting, after all. Jared pulled it into the water right away, and carefully cupped his hands around it. Jensen struggled to see. “What? Is it okay? Healthy?” he demanded. Then he added as an afterthought, “...um, boy or girl?”

“Like we could tell boy or girl yet,” Gen grinned, pushing at his shoulder. “Jared, show us.”

Jared brought his hands up just under the surface of the water and there, still uncurling, was the tiniest little person Jensen had ever seen. Jared’s hand was probably longer than everything except the tailfin. They all watched as its tiny gills fluttered, breathing just fine.

“It’s too small,” Jensen gasped. That tiny being was what all the fuss had been about? No human baby could live if it was born that small, he was sure. “How can it survive? It’s going to die!”

Gen swatted him. “It won’t!” she said. “Don’t say bad words. It’s perfect.” She turned glowing eyes on the miniature child. “Ours. Our perfect baby.”

The baby, still underwater, burbled, stretching out. Jared’s hands around it were amazingly gentle. He looked up at them. “We did it,” he said simply. “Jensen, can you sit up?”

Jensen wasn’t sure he could, less because of the physical strain or the mindblowing orgasms than because he was still stunned and gaping like a dinner fish at the sight of their baby. He saw what Gen had meant about not being able to tell gender yet: of course there weren’t any visible genitals, just the barest trace of a slit that looked like every mer Jensen had seen. The tail was a soft, light blue fading into violet and there wasn’t a trace of hair on its head yet, not even eyebrows or lashes. “It’s perfect,” he agreed helplessly, because he had to say something. 

Gen reached out as the baby started to wriggle and let a tiny hand try to curl itself around her finger, which was too wide for its fingers to reach. “Sit up, Jensen, and you can hold it,” she coaxed.

“I’m good,” Jensen said weakly, more out of some stray conviction that you weren’t supposed to stop laying down for some time after having a baby than anything else. “I just held it for a while, you guys can have a turn.”

They plainly thought he was being ridiculous, but didn’t argue. Instead they wound up cuddling him in place while the merinfant suckled at Jared’s nipple and Jensen tried not to stare. It had never occurred to him that Jared would produce milk. But now that he was paying attention, Jared’s pecs _were_ looking pretty swollen, just like Gen’s were. He surreptitiously felt at his own, but though his nipples were a little swollen and abused from sex, there was no hint they were about to start spurting fluid. He was pretty relieved if he was honest with himself. If his body never did unexpected and freaky things he hadn’t agreed to again, he’d be a happy man.

Eventually, when he was pretty sure everybody was dozing, he carefully, carefully reached and touched the back of the tiny merlet with one finger. There was a barely-defined ridge there, from the backbone down into the tail, which he knew would grow into a soft set of fins to help it swim straight. The scales of the tail were barely growing in, soft as skin, and the eyes, closed now, seemed unnaturally large for its face. 

He couldn’t help feeling like a total sap no matter what it looked like. He’d carried this little creature inside him and now he was as much its parent as Jared and Gen were, as much as if he’d fathered a completely human child. They’d explained, once the language lessons were far enough along, that Gen had taken his own DNA in to add to the eggs the very first time she’d had sex with him, way back at the beginning before he knew what anything meant. She’d already had Jared’s sperm in her, but the eggs didn’t start to grow until they had human DNA to help form them, so that his body wouldn’t attack them when they were implanted. It made him suspect that magic had helped the first mermaid to reproduce after all. Just not _easily._

He sighed. Any vague idea he might have had about returning to human civilization, now that he’d served his purpose in bringing a merbaby into the world, was no good. Even if he could have torn himself away from Gen and Jared, he could never leave his kid behind. He was going to see him or her grow up—into a reasonably-sized baby, first, and then into a free-swimming merchild, and someday maybe even see his child find a likely mate and want to start a family of their own.

He thought about that. There had to be ways he could make this easier on the next generation. He stared up at the domed ceiling of their bubble, watching the older merfolk who stared back down at their boneless sprawl unashamedly. Yes, there were things he could do. But nothing quite yet. Right now, it was just rest and wait for tomorrow.


	4. No Man's Land

Jensen was on babysitting duty a lot over the next weeks. Jared and Gen fished and, he saw for the first time, argued with the elders a lot, but they also spent all the time they could in the bubble. They spent an hour chasing around the tunnel pool after a medium-small fish got in, then Jared physically guarded the tunnel while Gen brought back some fine mesh netting, which they used to block the way except when they were going in or out. Jensen watched, bemused, and kept the baby safely in his hands while they worked. It could breathe air as easily as water, but didn’t have the strength yet to move on land. In the water was a different story. Jensen had no doubt it could escape him with a flick of its tail, and he was very happy for every baby-proofing measure invented.

Once the moon had waned and waxed full again and the baby was big enough to scream loudly when it wanted things, Jensen’s pacing was getting out of hand. Three months living in a reverse fishbowl was all very well compared to drowning to death, but if he had to spend another day here he was going to start doing some screaming of his own. “Please, guys. There’s got to be an island nearby you can take me to, _something_. I need to see something other than water and fish.”

Jared and Gen exchanged loaded glances. “There is a place,” Jared agreed.

The way he said it made Jensen instantly suspicious that there was more of a story to it. “Is it dangerous?”

“Not for you,” he said. “For us, yes.”

“I take you there,” Gen said. “And wait for you in the water, where the waves are calm. Today? Jared, you stay with Guppy?”

The merfolk didn’t give a child a real name until they knew if it was boy or girl, which made sense to Jensen. In the meantime, they’d been coming up with increasingly ridiculous nicknames. “Yes. But maybe the farther rock, you could both play there…?”

“No,” Gen said, like Jared was asking for _’just one more day_.’ “Tempus est. Jensen need see.”

Which didn’t sound ominus at _all,_ but then Jellybean started crying again and he wasn’t willing to delay _getting out of here for a day_ for answers. “Okay, sure, let’s see the sights. As long as those sights include trees and fresh air, I’ll be fine.”

Gen kissed him and by the time they made it out of the tunnel, swam for a couple hours and Gen let Jensen wash up on the beach of a lightly forested reef island barely rising out of the ocean, he’d mostly forgotten to worry. Given the mysterious introduction, though, he shouldn’t have been surprised to see three guys coming down the beach to meet him. They saw Jensen and waved. All three were dressed in rags; two of them were white-haired. 

“Hello!” Jensen shouted.

“Welcome!” one of them yelled back. They got close enough to carry on a conversation, but mostly they were all just staring at each other. Jensen hadn’t seen another human for three months, and these guys didn’t look any more civilized—they were deeply tanned and bearded, and they stared back just as frankly as he did. But no one said anything, until the younger-looking one—younger than the graybreads, but still much older than Jensen—sourly looked him up and down in his sea-soaked pants and shirt, barely worn until today. “Well, they got another one then, huh?”

Jensen felt like he’d been gut-punched. Instinctively, he looked over his shoulder for Gen, out past where the waves broke, but she was invisible. The guy saw him look, though, and obviously misinterpreted it. “Don’t worry, we don’t let them get too close.”

One of the old men spat angrily in the direction of the sea.

The other held out a hand for Jensen to shake. “Hello. Forgive our resident hothead, here. Randy has no manners. My name is James, and this is Miguel. Welcome to our humble bit of earth. Are you okay?”

Jensen nodded. “I’m fine,” he said cautiously. These men—they knew about merfolk too? “Mostly just happy to get a chance to stretch my legs,” he added.

“Well, we can give you a tour of the island, can’t we?” James asked, smiling. “I’ll talk your ear off if you let me. Miguel don’t say much, and what he does is mostly in Spanish.”

Miguel’s gaze landed on James a moment, then he looked back out to sea, scanning the waves.

“Since you’ll be spending the rest of your life here,” Randy said bitterly. “Sure, let’s get started.”

“Well, but…” Jensen hesitated, about to say that Gen would be happy to take him anywhere he wanted to go, and then closing his mouth on it. Plainly the merfolk knew the men were here. Had they really trapped them here? He decided to keep his mouth shut until he learned more. “Okay. Lead on.”

There were a couple rigged-together huts and just enough trees to break up the wind and sun, and a fresh hot wellspring that tasted of minerals and pooled in smooth billowy rocks before trickling out to the sea, but the island took less than an hour to walk all the way around. They kept to the beach and to a pace slow enough even Miguel, the oldest, had no trouble with it, and still found themselves recrossing their original footprints before the sun had time to lengthen their shadows.

“How is there enough food here for you?” Jensen asked, running mental calculations. There were coconuts and fruit trees, but not enough for even one person to live off for long, and from James’ anecdotes, the three men had been here for decades. “Do you catch a lot of fish?”

Randy flipped a rock into the ocean with his bare foot, irritated. 

James waved a hand out at endless horizon. “We have a fish weir,” he said. “It’s got stone walls, and the fish are trapped in there until we come catch them. The mers keep it stocked for us, so we can live out our long, lonely lives without going hungry.” A little bitter smile touched his lips before he shrugged it away with the quickness of long practice. 

Miguel snorted and muttered, “Diablo del mar.”

 _Sea Devil._ It wasn’t that James or Miguel were less angry about what the mers had done to them than Randy was. It was just that James managed it better, and Miguel...Jensen thought Miguel could have learned to speak English perfectly well in the time he must have been here. He just didn’t want to talk, not even to the humans who shared his predicament.

They were all traumatized by what the merfolk had done to them. They assumed without question that Jensen was too, and they were being polite enough not to press him to talk about it. But Jensen’s experience _hadn’t_ been what they assumed. He felt like a fraud, accepting their hospitality. They so obviously hated the merfolk, but he didn’t share their feelings at all. He loved Jared and Gen and their baby, enough to do anything for them...but if he told these men that, they would think he was a traitor.

“Wouldn’t the merfolk let you go back to civilization, if you wanted?” Jensen asked. Surely they wouldn’t be this cruel to protect their secret. Who would believe tales of mermaids in this day and age, much less any of the rest of it, even if the men could bring themselves to talk about it?

“Yeah, sure, we got a choice, after they did what they wanted to us,” Randy growled. “But I got a price on my head back home. I was supposed to die in the ocean. This is better than that, but it still sucks donkey balls.”

Miguel shrugged. “I like being alone. I like the sea.” His gaze wandered off to the horizon again.

“Yes, we got a choice,” James said heavily. He looked out in the direction Jensen had come from, and shook his head, refusing to say more.

“You asked about fish,” he said to Jensen instead. “Are you hungry? Come over to the firepit, we’ll show you how we cook.”

A real fire. Fellow appreciators of cooked food. Jensen let himself be distracted talking about boiling fish in the hotspring versus the way they roasted them over a fire or wrapped them in leaves to bake in the coals. James was easy to talk to, and it felt good to talk about something simple and understood between the four of them. He’d missed human company, other people fluent in English, men he didn’t have to explain things to or worry what they couldn’t or wouldn’t tell him.

But when the sun went down, he looked at the rough little huts and the men around the fire. He didn’t know them, and he couldn’t trust them, not really. Jared and Gen and the baby had to come first. He looked out to the ocean. “I’m going for a swim, I think.” 

“Don’t go back out there, are you crazy?” Randy said immediately.

Jensen made sure he was closer to the ocean than they were, backing up a few steps while trying to look casual. “I’ll be fine.” Then, because he couldn’t stand the thought of these men worrying that he’d drowned out there, he added, “Don’t wait up for me.”

Miguel snorted softly in scepticism, but didn’t move to stand up from his driftwood seat.

Randy was more than happy to press the point. “Nobody’s ever fine with those monsters out there. Oh, they seem friendly at first, but then, sooner or later…” he choked, and James patted his back.

“Maybe he doesn’t know yet,” James said thoughtfully. “Maybe the worst hasn’t happened yet, and there’s still time...listen to us, boy, _do not go back out to them._ ”

Jensen wished with all his heart he didn’t have to have this conversation. “They learned English for me,” he blurted. “It was different than what happened to you. I’m sorry. I have a baby out there.”

He didn’t want to see them react; he turned and ran into the waves, breath coming short, vision blurring. He’d known, since being filled in on the history of mer-human relations, that they’d had devastating impacts on the men who’d helped every single merperson he’d seen so far be born, but it was different seeing it when he met those men personally. He felt for them, but it couldn’t stop him from loving who he loved.

The waves came up to his waist, and he let the undertow take his feet out from under him and his head sink under the next wave, like he could wash himself clean of what he was feeling. 

“Jensen!” he heard James shouting when he came up. “Jensen, wait!”

Jensen didn’t go back under or start swimming away. He turned enough to be able to see them, the three old men, standing on the beach in the setting sun.

“You’ll be welcome back here,” James said simply, when he saw Jensen was listening. “You should come back if they let you.”

Jensen nodded. “Okay,” he said. It was all he could say. He let the ocean close over his head, searching for Gen’s confident arms and strong-swimming tail. He knew she would find him before long.

They went back to the bubble, of course. There was a very long conversation brewing, and the open ocean was no place for it.

“You never told me about the others on the island,” he said as soon as he felt the smooth rock floor underneath him again. Even the long swim with Gen, breathing her air and feeling the strength of her body, hadn’t done much for his mood.

“No,” Gen said simply.

“You could have told me, it would have been easier to say than 'will you carry our eggs,'” Jensen said. “You could have brought me to that island when Sprogling was born, or before that—you could have brought me there to start with, instead of staying in here.”

“Yes,” Jared agreed heavily. “We could have.”

“But the risk of me saying no would have been too much,” Jensen said. “They would have warned me against you.”

“Their hate is toxic,” Gen said angrily. “Others before us tried letting humans explain to humans. It only made them hate us more.”

“We couldn’t take chance,” Jared said. “Not often one of us is close enough to save someone like you. One human in a life’s years, if we are lucky. We had to start clean, start fresh.”

“They had reason to hate you,” Jensen said, but his anger was draining out of him already. The ocean was big, and not that many humans actually got thrown into it. He sighed. It had been hard enough for him to accept what they wanted; he probably couldn’t have done it with Randy yelling at him that mers couldn’t be trusted. “But I get why you did it.”

He buried his head in his arms, sitting in the shallows with his knees tucked up under his chin. He felt a light inquiring touch: it was the baby, swimming up to him to try and see what was wrong. He swept it up into his arms; it was an excellent cuddler.

“Hundreds of years ago, last time any human talk to new human mate before eggs,” Jared said, swimming closer, close enough to touch. “They got violent, hurt themselves, damage eggs.”

“Easier, better, if humans not know anything,” Gen agreed softly. “If they not know what will happen.”

“No. Knowing what will happen is better,” Jensen disagreed. “But I get it. The hatred from the ones it already happened to would have made it toxic, when that was the only way to explain it. But that doesn’t mean knowing is worse. It’s just there’s so little time to get used to the idea.” He frowned. “Do you always have sex right away?”

Gen looked puzzled. “They always want to,” she said. “Human men, from what the elders have said. They want to make babies, and then once the eggs start to grow they don’t want to make babies.” She sounded a little plaintive. “Very confusing.”

Jensen took a deep breath. “Did your people ever try with a human woman? Or has it all been men?”

“Once,” Jared said. “Your women aren’t thrown in the sea often. It’s mostly men on the ships. But when the ancestors got her here, she did not want to make babies at all, so they brought her back to other humans.” He shrugged eloquently. “Maybe she already had a family.”

Gen nodded. “Anyway, women are smaller and if human men have as much trouble carrying eggs as it seems, it would be even harder if they were smaller.”

Jensen sort of wanted to laugh and sort of wanted to cry. “On land, men never carry babies in them,” he said emphatically. “Ever. There aren’t even any animals where the males carry babies, not like, um, sea horses. A man can make a baby with a woman and never see her again after that night—”

Gen and Jared were looking confused and mildly horrified.

“—Well, _good_ men don’t do that, we stick around and bring food home—but men who choose to be sailors aren’t always good men, not the kind interested in raising a family. And the ones who get thrown off their ships in good weather probably aren’t the best of those.”

“Then why try to make babies with mermaids?” Gen asked, frustrated.

“They probably don’t imagine that human and mermaid babies are _possible_ ,” Jensen said. “They just want to have sex because it feels good.”

“That’s it?” Jared sounded baffled. “Just for fun?” 

Like the concept had never even _occurred_ to him. Jensen squinted at him suspiciously.

Jared’s body had put him through a lot during the whole affair, too. He’d been the one preparing Jensen’s body for what Gen needed—no, what the baby needed. Hours every day, and then the intensity of the transplantation process, and breastfeeding the baby after it came out of Jensen…

It probably _hadn’t_ ever occurred to any merman to engage in casual sex without thinking about what would happen if there was a baby. And especially when it meant wrangling an unruly human through months of traumatized lashing out, _plus_ doing half the work of keeping three people and a growing new life fed on fish and seaweed...he’d never seen the other merfolk offering to bring in food, even when Jared and Gen were at their most exhausted, after the transfer or the birth.

“They want to have sex because they like sex, and they don’t usually have to deal with any consequences unless somebody makes them, or if they have feelings for the woman,” Jensen repeated, unable to look them in the eye while he said it.

“So they don’t really want babies?” Gen asked, looking upset. “...Did _you_ not really want a baby?”

“It wasn’t the first thing on my mind,” Jensen admitted. He still couldn’t look up, but he instinctively clutched their infant closer. “I wanted to feel...not alone, and I wanted to make you happy, and I wanted to not think about people trying to kill me by way of sharks.”

“Oh.” Gen and Jared exchanged disturbed looks.

“Women think a lot more about consequences, with sex, than men do,” Jensen added. “Maybe we’re stupid that way. Women have to make sure their partner is going to be a good parent, not just run off and leave them to do all the work.”

“...So if our people convinced a woman we would be good parents, she might be more willing than the men?” Gen asked.

“Maybe,” Jensen shrugged. “Some might. I don’t know. Women are strange, I can’t say how they think.”

“And the men, they don’t want to be fathers?” Jared demanded.

“Well, some do, obviously,” Jensen said, looking down at the baby he was still cuddling tight. He cupped a handful of seawater and poured it over her skin to make sure it didn’t dry out. “But I think men need longer to get used to the idea. And not have it all sprung on them.” He thought about Randy’s rage, Miguel’s distant stare, James’s hidden feelings. “Not have the life of the eggs depending on them before they even know about having to carry them.”

“Was it so terrible?” Jared asked, frowning. “We tried hard to make you feel good…”

“You did, and I love you for it,” Jensen assured him. “No, it wasn’t terrible. Not nearly as bad as it could have gone. As I expected it to be…” he stopped and shook his head. “I don’t think I can describe it to you,” he said instead. “But when you have the chance, someday, I want you to be around a human woman having a baby.”

“But they’re hardly ever on ships, like you said,” Gen protested. She was frowning, trying to figure out how they could. Considering the merfolk had gone their entire existence without encountering a pregnant woman, Jensen had to admit it might be easier said than done.

But that didn’t matter. “I’ll work something out,” he said firmly. He had a few ideas already. He hoped they worked, anyway. “But first I need to learn more about the men on the island.”

Gen shrugged uneasily. “They don’t allow any merfolk close,” she said. “They have spears for fishing. They throw rocks and spears at us if we try to talk to them. But they eat and seem healthy, so what is there to do?”

“No boats have ever tried to land there?” Jensen frowned. “How long have the merpeople been stashing their extra humans on that island?”

“That island?” Jared asked. “Only about five hundred years. Before that, there was another island, on the other side of the ocean.” 

“Right,” Jensen sighed. Five hundred years of bitterness accumulating, passed down from the older men to the younger ones...he wanted to scream. “We’re going to start bringing them things. Not just fish. Human things.”

* * *

It was two years before Grace was big enough to avoid being eaten by passing fish when she came out into the ocean, and while she learned to babble words in four languages, Jensen made some progress in getting the island men to tolerate his mer-family—or at least, Jensen could stand in the shallow waves of the island beach and talk to one of the men (usually James) on land and one of his mates (Jared and Gen took turns) in the water, and they would warily stay close enough to him that he didn’t have to shout. 

Well, not too loudly, anyway.

Progress was slow, but he was determined. He got Gen and Jared to send some clothes and ropes and tarps, and cooking pots, knives, and more canned chili. The chili was a hit; the guys had been living on nothing but fish and coconuts for so long, they actually cried when they tasted it. Jensen resolved to bring them more civilized food on the spot, but it would have to wait until Grace wasn’t a full-time handful.

The first time Grace visited the island, sticking close by Jared and Gen both, James seemed tickled by her, and even invited them closer. But Randy came along and when he saw Jared he scooped up a stone and threw it. Jensen’s mer-family darted farther out to sea and watched warily. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” Jensen snapped. It hadn’t come close to hitting Grace, but it could have.

“Fucking freak, he’s lucky it wasn’t a spear.” Randy had sworn many times to kill any mer that came on shore.

Jensen didn’t think arguing for an innocent kid would make him back down. “If you hurt my family, I’ll make you regret it,” he promised instead.

“Tell your family to stay away from our home, then,” Randy snarled, but it was half-hearted; he’d enjoyed the chili and other gifts, too. He stalked back into the trees. 

Jensen sighed. Some days went better than others.

But when he looked at James, James waded out into the water to stand next to him. “Sins of the father don’t accrue to the child,” he said, and sat down in the surf as Grace peered out from behind Gen’s protective arm. 

“Accrue?” Jared asked, unfamiliar with the word.

“Porto, fero,” Jensen explained. “Carry over.”

“Oh,” said Jared. He looked at James and shook his head. “Our fathers and mothers, many sins, many years. Ocean not wash away.”

“Well.” James actually held Jared’s gaze. “Whiskey might help.”

Jensen didn’t actually see Jared or Gen fetching whiskey, but they did talk to the elders for a long time when they got back that night, and a few weeks later when they visited the island again, Miguel saluted him on arrival with a bottle. There had been a whole case mysteriously washed up on shore, and even Randy was less bitter than usual.

A few months later, James stomped right into the water with Jensen when it was time to leave, and waved down Jared. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do with the yellowfins, boy,” he came right to the point, “but cut it out. The pen won’t hold that much fish without breaking.”

Jared looked anxious. “I could skip the pen,” he suggested hesitantly. “Send it straight up the beach.”

“Look,” James sighed, “Just ‘cause tuna’s my favorite don’t mean I need to eat it every day. I like some variety, too, and those big-ass tuna’ve been eating or crowding out all the other fish in the weir. They’ll jump the rocks if they’re scared enough.”

Gen pulled Jensen into her arms and nuzzled his ear. “I tell Jared that was too much tuna,” she murmured in his ear. Grace giggled and threw her arms around his neck.

“I understand,” Jared told James, looking only slightly crushed. “Only occasional tuna, then.” 

“Maybe a few a year,” James agreed, and hesitated. “Look—it ain’t just fish that’ll throw themselves around like idiots when they get scared. You gotta make allowances. You catch my drift, boy?”

Jared nodded soberly. 

Jensen threw a questioning look at Gen, to try and figure out if she knew what was going on, but she was watching Jared intently. Were those tears in her eyes, or just ocean water? Jensen was suddenly sure that there were things being said he didn’t understand, even though all the words were in English.

“I like tuna,” Grace piped up, latching on to the part that made sense to her. She swam over to Jared. “An’ I like salmon, and mackerel, an’...”

“Of course you do,” Jared said, scooping her into his arms, her tail beating against his. “Because they’re _delicious_. And there are lots of fish in the ocean to eat. But fish have lots of baby fish, and merpeople like us don’t get to have many babies like you at all.” He looked back up at James, who was smiling at Grace. “We all do things we shouldn’t when we’re scared,” he said softly. “There have never been enough of my people, and we all want children so desperately. And they so often die…” He shook his head. “But we are not going to be like we were in the past.” He paused. “...Father.”

James didn’t gasp or look surprised, and Jensen got it. This was the piece he’d been missing. Gen had known—even Randy knew, though he was off sulking on the other side of the island. Only Miguel stood on the beach, watching James, sharply tracking the conversation. 

“I would have liked to watch you grow up,” James admitted. “If your parents and I weren’t enemies. I look at the way you are,” he nodded to Jensen and Gen, “and I think about what it was like, back then...I’m glad you’re better now. I’m proud of you for making the effort to change.” He threw in a pause of his own. “Son.”

Another year went by. Randy and Jensen got in a stupid fistfight while building a raft out of driftwood and packing crates, but afterwards Randy calmed down and almost behaved like a decent person. Miguel and James decided that Grace was adorable enough to break the “no mermaids on the island” rule, and she was allowed to climb up the beach and hug them whenever she visited. Jared and Gen allowed it as long as Randy was nowhere in sight.

“It’s time for the next change,” Jensen told Jared and Gen. They were sprawled on the rock Jared had mentioned once, a tiny barren islet not far from the men’s island. Nothing but seaweed grew here, but the wave-smoothed rocks were warm from the sun. He spent a lot of time on the island now, but Jared and Gen still brought him here or to the undersea bubble whenever they wanted private time together. “I need to go back to the human shore.”

“Right now?” Jared picked his head up off Jensen’s chest. 

“No, tomorrow or the next day would be fine,” Jensen said. “I’ve waited this long.” 

“Okay,” Gen said, curling her fingers in his chest hair. He didn’t have much, not like some guys, but the merfolk didn’t seem to have any, so they found it endlessly fascinating. “Where Jared took you before?”

“No,” Jensen said. “I need to go to a specific place. How long will it take to get to the continent?”

“Days,” Jared frowned. “Why the continent? Surely, you get to humans, you can travel human ways?”

“I’m going to be looking for a specific human,” Jensen said. “And it would be a lot easier not to have to un-fake my death, not to mention money and passports.”

“What person?” Gen asked curiously.

“Danneel!” Jensen called from the waves, and the figure on the beach turned and looked at him. His clothes looked terrible and he’d wanted to shave, but nobody’d had a razor. He hoped it wouldn’t matter; she’d never cared about those things.

“ _Jensen?_ ” she asked incredulously, and then she was running and laughing and they threw their arms around each other. “I thought you were _dead_ ,” she mumbled against his neck.

“I know. I’m sorry,” Jensen murmured, stroking her hair. “I thought I was too, at times.” 

“But you’re back now,” she said, and pulled her face away to look up at him. “You’re back now, right?”

Jensen hesitated. “Do you still love me, Danneel?” he asked, and was more relieved than he could express to hear her laugh in response.

“Of course I do, silly! You think any number of years is going to change how I feel about you?”

“Then…” Jensen took a deep breath. “Do you trust me? Can you, _will_ you trust me?”

“What do you mean, Jensen?” Danneel looked at him carefully, brow furrowing.

“I mean, will you come away with me?” Jensen asked seriously. “Without knowing where or why, or what’s happened since I’ve been gone—will you follow me? All I can tell you is it’ll be the adventure of a lifetime.” He smiled; suddenly his plan seemed ridiculously weak. Of course she would say no. Any sane person would.

“Jensen…” Danneel hesitated, thinking about it. And about what he _wasn’t_ saying. “Jensen, do you still love _me_?”

“You’re not the only one I love, anymore, Danni,” he said softly. “The people who saved me, and took me in, they’re my family now. But yes. I still love you, and I want you to be part of my family.”

“You’re asking for a lot of trust,” she said. Her hands cupped his face.

“I’m going to keep asking more,” Jensen said.

“Yeah, I can tell,” Danneel laughed a little. “You’re being very mysterious.”

“Does that mean ‘no?’” He lightly touched the curve of her cheek.

“You’re lucky I love a man of mystery,” she told him, grinning wryly. “Where am I coming away to?”

“Out to sea,” Jensen said simply, and let go of her, backing out into deeper water.

She’d either follow him or she wouldn’t.

END.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All feedback loved, concrit welcome! <3


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